Life Beyond The Stars
by last1stnding
Summary: Post The Doctor Falls. Clara Oswald is eking out a living on a dead planet when an injured, regenerating Doctor mysteriously joins her. This will be a/u after Christmas 2017 but I wanted a future for the Twelfth Doctor and Clara that didn't involve death or parting. More like the reunion I'd like to see them have. NEW CHAPTERS ADDED.
1. Chapter 1

Evening had fallen and the campfire flames threw ghostly light on the hulking, ruined skyscraper buildings that ringed the area that was once a busy traffic hub. Now, what was left of the ruins of a technologically superior race stood silent sentinel to the hardy band of survivors who gathered in the light of the fires.

This was the one time of their daily lives that they took a break from the ordeal of surviving on the land to relax and be entertained. The few elderly people who could remember the old days spoke of fabulous things; whole worlds inside viewers that transported the wearer to far off lands and wonders. People didn't have to wonder what was going on outside of their own world; there were devices that informed one instantly. Sometimes one even watched it as it happened.

All of that was gone now. Soon even the few left who could recall such a time would be gone as well. No one was quite sure what happened but the elderly just passed away and everyone moved on, shaking their heads in bafflement at the cause. Everybody, it seemed, was from somewhere else. Knowledge was lost and soon everyone gave up on repairing the abandoned ruins of yesterday.

However, there was an air of anticipation on this chilly night. The storyteller was Lady Prydonian, one of the very best of a small number remaining. While others of a certain age disappeared or died, she still remained. After three cycles of the twin moons, the ancient Lady would appear at the outskirts of the dwelling and celebrations would commence. The Festival of the Fall Harvest was eagerly awaited by all. It was the one time people stopped worrying about survival and celebrated eking out another cycle of life in the forbidding world.

Chatter ceased immediately when the Lady, escorted by the two leaders of the community, entered the circle. Her chair was set up and blankets heaped nearby but the diminutive lady never seemed to feel the cold. Her audience raised their glasses in salute and then settled in silence to hear another thrilling tale of the ancient days.

"Tonight," the Lady's voice, clear and still youthful sounding despite her long grey hair and wrinkled face, "I will speak of a love story between two beings that should never have happened. They were so diverse, yet so alike." She paused. "It all happened a very long time ago in another world, far away from here.

"She was an instructor of children. Knowledge had not yet been lost in her world and she was happy to share the wisdom of the ages before with the young. He was an alien to her world. One of a powerful race known as the Time Lords of Gallifrey. They had many magical powers. They could travel through the stars. They could travel through time. Actually go back in time so you could see your mother, go forward in time to see unborn grandchildren grow old. Her name was Clara, his name was The Doctor. When they first met, the Doctor was a wild young man, babbling something about protecting Clara. At first he overwhelmed her, and then she began to like him. She went on adventures with him, saving people and righting wrongs. But one day, the Doctor got involved in a war that lasted his entire long lifetime. Clara, who had been sent home for her protection, was brought back to him one last time before he died. Seeing how old he had become broke her heart. But it was nothing compared to what happened next."

"You see, the Time Lords had another extraordinary gift; they could change themselves before they died." She waited for the gasps to subside. "They became brand new people, with a new lifespan and a new face. And while Clara stood there watching, her Doctor turned back into the young man she'd known before and then…. He changed again. Right in front of her eyes."

Her audience could hardly contain themselves. This was thrilling stuff!

The old lady continued. "This new man who called himself the Doctor was a fierce looking man, much older than the young Doctor but much younger than the Doctor who dying of old age." She suppressed a smile as she watched her audience try to figure that one out. "This new man, the new Doctor, was rude and abrupt and, as it turned out, frightened. He had the Doctor's knowledge and goodness but he was also a warrior with intense passions. He could hate if he needed to and this scared him. He was cold and insulting. Clara at first did not know what to make of him. In some ways he frightened her; he was not safe, not like her previous Doctor. It was hard to remember that they were supposed to be the same man. In the important ways though, he was. He fought injustice and tyranny. His coldness, as it turned out, concealed the fact that he cared far too much and he was frightened of the direction of his own intense emotions. And Clara came to realize that he did indeed need her, relied on her perhaps more than he did previously. And the fact that he had even asked if he was a good man proved to her that the good heart of her friend was still intact."

"The Doctor's world was so different from Clara's. He was from beyond the night; where the sun glowed hot throughout time. Where knowledge had been accumulated and treasured for time immeasurable. Clara loved seeing the universe with him. Where all was different from what she'd known before. She loved seeing alien races. But it was not always smooth. Sometimes this new Doctor and Clara fought bitterly; however they could unite again instantly for the right cause. Almost without their realizing it, they became bonded to each other. But, after a tragedy with a special friend of Clara's, she and the Doctor parted. They lied to each other, each believing the other would be better off alone. However, it soon became clear they were bitterly unhappy and could no longer stand to be separated. The Doctor came back for Clara," the old woman's face creased into an impish grin, 'because he was useless without her advice, guidance – and love. Immediately after his return, they both nearly died from a horrible alien creature that covers one's face and slowly squeezes one's brain to death." The old woman drew out a horrible looking mask and placed it briefly over her face before returning it to her lap. Her audience was disgusted by the sight. "But the Doctor, with some help from a strange, legendary ally of the planet Earth, which is yet another tale, recovered in time to save them both. He was brave and clever and Clara loved him even more than before. After that, the Doctor and Clara declared they would no longer be parted and they traveled the universe, fighting evil and restoring justice. They were so happy together."

The Lady's face hardened. "But the Time Lords were a treacherous lot. They thought the Doctor knew of some Gallifreyan legend of long ago, telling of a creature that would come and destroy Gallifrey because its heart had been broken by loss. The almighty Time Lords were frightened by this ancient legend. So much so they set a trap to capture the Doctor but Clara, trying to help, got caught in the trap as well. To the Doctor's immense sorrow, Clara was killed and the Doctor was transported far away to an unknown destination."

The Lady waited for the gasps of shock and dismay. Several wiped their eyes. The Lady seemed outwardly untouched by any emotion. Her eyes were cold.

"The Time Lords sent the Doctor to a far off land, where he was imprisoned and tortured for so long the stars themselves burned out. But he would not give in. He had a plan to save his friend Clara. He suffered mightily until he broke free from the prison in which he was held and escaped. When the Doctor walked into the sunlight again, it was on his home planet of Gallifrey."

"The other Time Lords and their allies were aghast; they had given up on him. They thought, or rather, hoped, he was dead. They made excuses for their behavior; saying he only had to tell them what he knew of this ancient prophecy of doom and he would have been set free. But the Doctor was angry; he rejected their excuses and exiled the leaders. One renegade Time lord and they all feared him. They still thought he might be the mythical hybrid, the legend they had worried so much about for so long. The creature that would destroy Gallifrey. So the Doctor conceived of a plan; given the use of Time Lords' fabulous technology, he would bring his friend Clara back to life."

There was more sensation from the audience. The Lady however, betrayed no emotion.

"Using the mighty power of the Time Lords, the Doctor went back through the many years and centuries of the past to retrieve Clara, mere moments before her death. He succeeded and brought her back to Gallifrey, and back to life. But the Time Lords were angry; this was against their laws. They resolved to stop the Doctor and make him return Clara to the state of death."

"Clara herself did not want her soul mate to be hurt, more than he already had been. He was much changed from the intense but peaceful warrior she had known from before. He was nervous, distracted. And, to Clara's profound shock, he was now violent. He shot a man right in front of her eyes. It seemed she could no longer reach him the way she used to. But she still loved the Doctor, more than her own life. She pleaded with him to return her to death but he would not. So, they stole a moving vehicle of the stars called a Tardis, and left the Time Lords behind stewing in futile anger."

"All was not well though. The Doctor had suffered so much during his imprisonment that Clara worried he would not recover. He was so weary; yet burned with impatience. Clara herself was only partially returned to life; she was alive but she could not age. She was frozen in time. The Doctor, very upset, tried frantically to reverse this condition. He became angry. Clara got angry as well and they argued. In the end, the Doctor sadly decided they would be better parted. The Doctor feared the Time Lords would find Clara if she stayed with him and force her back to her death. The Doctor had so much power at his command, but he felt he was a danger to the galaxy because his love for Clara caused him to lash out and to punish people. He was willing to burn the universe to keep his Clara safe. Clara would do the same for him as well but she was more level headed about it," the old woman added tartly. "She begged the Doctor to let her stay but he was exhausted and frightened. He couldn't think straight. Finally, he took a magic elixir and it made him forget all about his Clara. She was erased from his memory. All to keep her safe from the Time Lords and to keep the universe safe from the Doctor."

Several sobs broke from the women in the audience. The men shook their heads and promised each other that in the Doctor's boots they would wreak vengeance on the Time Lords. Children cried noisily.

"In the end, the Doctor and Clara did see each other one last time. She arranged for them to meet at her ship, the Tardis he had stolen. He did not know who she was as they talked but he promised he would look for Clara for the rest of his life. Her heart was breaking but Clara let him go without telling him, knowing that this was what he wanted. He thought he was doing what was best. She didn't agree but fighting him would only cause him more pain. So Clara took him back to his own Tardis and they parted, never to see each other again."

Someone blew their nose and there was a nervous, but sad laughter.

The Lady spoke again. "There are still legends about Clara and the Doctor. The fierce looking Doctor with whom she had fought with so angrily was in fact the face she loved best. Most importantly though, that Doctor is still out there, fighting evil, restoring justice and maybe, if he has the same face, still looking for his Clara."

DW DW DW

The Lady had slipped off into the night, accepting the thanks and food from the tribe that sheltered amongst the tall, dead buildings. She had no need of the food of course, but to refuse it would raise suspicion. It was hard enough to slip away without being followed; each time there would be a handful determined to see where the old woman had gone and how she traveled. But the people were too frightened to venture out very far in the night; strange beasts and roving bands of displaced and desperate brigands haunted the shadows. So, as always, her entourage had gradually disappeared. She herself never felt fear. In fact, she thought sadly, it had been so long since she had felt anything at all.

Stepping out of the large lobby of a former trading company building, Clara Oswald finger combed her hair and dumped the old gray wig into her travel bag. She had scrubbed away the makeup that made her look aged and wrinkled. If she had been completely alive, she would have been exhausted. As it was, only a lingering depression and mental fatigue dogged her steps. On days like these, being frozen in between heartbeats had all the disadvantages of both worlds.

 _She should stop telling that story._ The first thousand times or so it was a comfort; a way to combat the loneliness. When she told the story, the Doctor was still with her, at least in spirit. He might not like the editorial changes she made in the story from time to time; she amused herself by imagining his reaction when she told the version that she had rescued him from the confession dial, restored him to health and sent the Time Lords packing, all by herself. Clara stifled a grin; the eyebrows would flare and a pained, irritated look would grace his face. Then he would ask what pudding brain had made that up.

Even after all this time, she could see him as clearly as she did in the diner that last day; an exhausted, haunted man who played a song dedicated to her on his guitar. Did he truly forget her? Or was he lying, yet again? Clara knew him well enough not to take everything at face value with her rogue Time Lord. But, of all the people she missed in her strange, long life, she missed him most of all. His boyish grin, the fierce looking eyebrows, the swagger, the guitar and the sonic shades. She loved every bit of him and the passage of time had not dimmed it, not one iota.

Clara kept walking, heading back to her Tardis, which was now as dark and dead as the landscape on this forgotten planet. On the day she landed here, the power suddenly went off inexplicably and nothing she could do would ever get it to work again. She became as marooned as Ashildr trudging through the years. If she could have, Clara Oswald would go straight back to Gallifrey, then to Trap Street and face the raven again. At least it would be an end to it. Instead, she wandered this planet in her guise as an old woman storyteller. It was an acceptable pastime for quite a while. At first it was amusing, changing the story to fit her mood that day. But it the feeling hadn't lasted nearly long as she had been stuck here.

Oh well. The food she would give to the next village. For now, back to her Tardis for a few days' rest. It would give her time to scour the internal systems again and try to figure out why it had failed. And wonder yet again if this is how the Doctor had felt in his perpetual prison of the clockwork castle. A hopeless journey without end. So much like hers.

 _ **DW DW DW**_

Even though she really had no need for sleep, every once in a while Clara slept in and, surprisingly, slept soundly. Perhaps it was mental rest she craved more than physical but whatever the reason, she had slept. It was a blessed relief. Hours had passed without her being awake to count them.

Going out to the diner part of her Tardis, she was astounded to see it was already early evening. Clara couldn't recall the last time she'd slept so long. Ashildr had still been with her, that much was certain.

Sitting down on a stool, she placed the food she'd brought back last night on the counter. She needed to repackage it for the next trip. As usual, the biggest problem was one that never left her these days. What to do next? How to fill in the endless hours? Clara always refused to leave for the next village immediately. It would arouse suspicion that she had arrived so quickly. (Walking all night and through the day erased this problem and it was no hardship for her.) Also, she needed a break from the stories of the past. Sometimes they got to be too much, even for the former impossible girl. But every time she tried to think up something new, it all paled in comparison to what she had done with the Doctor. It was… boring.

Suddenly there was a loud crash outside somewhere in the distance. Clara jumped up, feeling the old adrenalin of investigating the unknown kick in as she moved toward the door looking outside into the fading light of evening. She heard far off shouting and some screaming but nothing could be seen.

And then, she saw it.

No one who had ever seen the golden fire of artron energy would ever forget it. Now Clara Oswald saw the golden flames shooting toward the dark sky. She rushed to the door, uncertain what to think. Should she be worried? A Time Lord who had found her before whatever had happened to him/her/them? Elated? What if it was Missy? She felt the old anger and distrust of the renegade Time Lady. Unbidden, she felt a sharp stab of fear thinking that Missy might have tracked down the Doctor once again. But then an icy fear clutched her frozen heart; _what if was_ _ **him**_ _?_

It was a sight she'd never wanted to see again. That golden light, achingly bright, heralding a Time Lord regeneration.

The light pierced the darkness of the sky and Clara could hear the nearby villagers screaming in terror or yelling defiance. She knew without looking that most would be running away.

She hit the door running. Toward the light of course.

 _ **DW DW DW**_

The golden energy was still pulsating through the darkness when Clara reached the clearing of what used to be a small park. She could hardly see the figure immersed in the golden glow. Standing back, actively fighting the impulse to get closer, Clara waited impatiently.

At last the glow receded enough for her to tell it was a man. Tears burned her eyes. As if the universe had not been cruel enough to them already. _If you've brought him back to me so I can see him die again, I'll…._ In reality, what could she do?

Advancing closer, Clara's heart lurched; it was him! The Doctor; **her Doctor!** But wait; what if this was like before; he was himself for a few minutes more and then regenerated into someone new. The Doctor was awkwardly lying on the ground, eyes closed, unmoving. Clara started praying to a deity she thought she had long outgrown as she approached.

The Doctor's skin still looked tingly but, dropping to her knees, Clara felt an intense happiness seize her soul, merely seeing him again. Her voice cracking, she said, "Oh, Doctor. Silly old git. How I've missed you!" She ran her hand along his cheek. The skin was very warm, almost hot for him, but it didn't hurt her. Clara studied his face like a woman dying of thirst and finding an oasis. Bending over, Clara did something she'd dreamed of doing since that last day in her Tardis; she brushed her lips against his, tenderly. "Please, please don't change," she pleaded, invoking memories of long ago when she'd implored his younger self to stay the same. Heedless of any danger, she laid her head on his chest, her arms around him.

And quickly made a chilling discovery. His hearts weren't beating. Nor was he breathing.

Sitting back up, Clara felt her soul explode in rage and sadness. _How dare the universe use them this way! Haven't the fates done enough to them? Hadn't she and the Doctor paid enough for whatever sin it was they were supposed to have committed?_ To see her Doctor one last time but never to hear his voice again? Never hear him play the guitar again? Or to have some other Doctor step forward, one that would toss aside the guitar, the shades, the seven layers of clothing. No, no _,_ _ **NO!**_

Suddenly overwrought, Clara collapsed on him in anger, fists flailing, and tears streaming down her face. "Why?" She sobbed. "Why us? We only tried to do good. We weren't evil. Why?"

The strength of her sobs would have choked her had she been breathing. Clara struck the Doctor on the chest a couple of times, just to see if his hearts would start. They did not. Finally, she fell back on top of the Doctor, clutching him and feeling the fury recede into a dull acceptance that her endless life would go on for forever without him. Or without 'this' him at least.

Hearing some noise behind her, Clara raised her head to see three of the nearby villagers standing there, staring at her. She sniffed and lay her head back down on the Doctor's chest. _Go away._

"Um, we saw some light over this way? Was that your doing?" The woman who asked was tall and holding a knife at the ready.

Clara ignored her. She clutched the Doctor's body tighter.

Because she didn't have on her storyteller costume, no one recognized her. "Look, are you in some kind of trouble?" An older man with a kindly face asked. "Do you need some help?"

A younger man stepped forward. Clara recognized him from the story session from before. He had sat right in the front with the kids and didn't feel bad about it. "Lady, you might be in danger here. If your, um, mate, is dead, then you should come back with us. It isn't safe."

Clara finally raised her head. "There is no danger here for me. I've already lost everything," she said dully.

The woman's face softened; everyone here had known loss and grief first hand. "Can we help in any way? What are your customs? You know, what do you want to do with the… body?"

Clara reluctantly stood up. Studying the Doctor's face closely she noticed he had been grimacing; probably from when the regeneration energy started. _Only a matter of time now before he became somebody else_. Or, God forbid, stayed dead. But she would not leave him here, alone. Turning, she said, "I have a home over there, in the trees. Could you help me carry him back to my place? I have my own rituals to attend to and I'll need to be alone for that."

The three readily agreed, although the younger man was still suspicious over the disappearing golden fire. But they each took an arm and a leg and carried the Doctor back to the simple Tardis he had stolen so long ago while escaping from the Cloisters.

 _ **DW DW DW**_

After the hardy little band had departed, Clara sat down and unashamedly wept again. Loud sobs wracked her small body. She gripped the Doctor's cold hand in both of hers, tears streaming down her face. There was no more energy left to rail at the fates; no more passion remained to wail at the unforgiving merciless universe. There was only her left at this dead end planet, her and the man she loved. _Was he truly dead this time? Or would he still regenerate?_ He would be the same man in some ways; but oh so different in the ways that counted. She sighed, still sniffling. On one hand, she would not be alone here in this desolation. After a time, she had adjusted to this Doctor's new face. But it was hard back then and it would be even harder now. She and this grumpy Scottish Doctor had shared so much together. Where one left off, the other started. Clara Oswald felt more alone than ever. Could she go through it again? Did she even **want** to go through it again?

Or maybe this time, the Doctor really was dead. Clara couldn't even comprehend that thought. A universe without the Doctor. Clara without **this** doctor. She swallowed. Utter desolation on all counts.

Irrationally, they had covered the Doctor's face before her helpers had left. Putting two of the long diner tables together had made a makeshift resting place for him. She dared not let them see the console room of the Tardis; the three were curious enough about a young woman living out here in the wilds by herself. They would be back again someday, Clara knew, just to see if she was still here and to look around her curious establishment even more. At this time though, they were so unimportant.

So, she had uncovered the Doctor's face and sat down to grieve and to study him. _His hair was so long! He looked gorgeous. He had on a ragged black version of the velvety coat she had admired with the red lining. It was still striking even torn and stained. A white long sleeved shirt with loose cuffs, dark vest and pants. His clothing looked like he had been in a battle. Leaning closer though, Clara noticed fine lines of exhaustion, pain and tension._ It was clear his life of late had been a stressful one. Almost unbidden, she wondered if he had been traveling alone. She hoped not; it was always worse when he was alone. He needed someone after all, Clara told herself roughly. This is what she had wanted him to do, get on with his life and find a new companion if it couldn't be her. But, if there was a new one in her place, whoever it was hadn't taken care of him properly and that fanned a flame of anger inside her. Almost immediately, she dully realized she was being totally unfair. Clara Oswald knew first hand just how domineering the Doctor could be when he didn't want attention or people prying. But still…. _**I would have noticed.**_ _ **I would have done something.**_

She sat on a dining room chair next to the joined tables for hours, clutching his hand and awaiting signs of life or that he would be changing. Last time it was so quick, she barely had time to notice until a fierce looking blue eyed older man stood in place of her young bow tie beau, looking just as shocked as she was. Clara sighed. _So many lifetimes ago._ But the longer this went on, the more apprehensive and depressed she felt. It was dragging on for forever. Maybe this was really the end.

 _ **DW DW DW**_

Night had turned to morning. Clara had collapsed; her head on the table next to the Doctor's body. During the long dark hours of studying him minutely, even she had succumbed to rest. Emotional turmoil will do that for you, she remembered as she opened her bleary eyes, wondering what exactly had awoken her in the fuzzy aftermath of a deep sleep.

Then, she felt it. The hand clutched in her hand had moved. And it moved slightly once again as she felt his ring move in her palm.

Clara bolted upright, completely and achingly awake now. Was this it? _Time for one last look at him to imprint on her memory forever?_

Leaning forward, she studied the Doctor's face. It had changed, the grimace was gone but not the weariness and the pain. Then, naturally when she was leaning in very close, his eyes opened.

Shocked, Clara almost fell back until she saw something else that broke her already still heart. The blue eyes she knew so well were covered with a milky white film. Something had happened, something very bad. The Doctor shifted, tried to raise a hand but it was ensnared in the blanket tucked in around him. He immediately began to fight it.

Clara moved quickly. "Wait, it's all right. It's okay now. I've got you."

The Doctor stilled; his head cocked toward her voice. She could see his eyes moving behind the white veil that covered them and his expression looked somewhat panicked. "Who," he cleared his throat, his voice raspy, "is there?"

Swallowing nervously, uncertain of his reaction, she replied, "It's me, Doctor. Clara."

"Clara?" His voice sounded so lost and rough. His eyes gave another nervous flutter under the white.

Her heart broke. _After all this time, he still couldn't remember her?_

The Doctor stirred, fighting to free himself from the blanket. "Are you still there?"

"Yes." Clara said in a small voice.

Finally managing to sit up, the Doctor passed a hand over his eyes. "I regenerate and I'm back to being blind!" Angrily, he tried to throw the blanket away and nearly hit Clara instead.

"Hey, take it easy," Clara soothed, trying to get him to calm down. "It's all right; you haven't regenerated. You are still you but, I ,um, don't know for how long." Her voice broke at the end; she hoped he wouldn't notice.

He did. The Doctor turned his head toward her again, clearly trying to gauge where she was. When he spoke, his voice was deep and soft. "Are your eyes still doing that bulging out thing again, Clara Oswald?"

Clara gave an inarticulate yell before reaching out to embrace him. "Oh my God! You do remember me!"

The Doctor tried to look disdainful but his slight smile disarmed the effect. Spitting out a mouthful of Clara hair, he mumbled, "Human compatible memory block. Massive headache only. Nothing to do with me." Then his expression turned serious. "What do you mean I haven't changed?"

Reluctantly, Clara pulled back, to stare into those disconcertingly white eyes. "You were glowing with artron energy when you arrived here. I thought you were dead. Hey, wait! You didn't have heartbeats yesterday?" She pressed both hands on his chest; her expression grew even more confused. "But…"

"I still don't have heartbeats," the Doctor finished for her. He sighed. "Oh, Clara, I would have done anything to spare you this." His expression was bleak.

"What? Spare me what? What are you talking about?" Clara hadn't felt so panicked in decades.

The Doctor stared unseeing in the distance. "We take forever to die," he said softly. His face was devastated.

Clara sat back, her spirit crashing as fast as it had rose into the sky. "Who are 'we'? Wait, are you saying Time Lords take forever to die? Is that what you're doing now, dying?"

The Doctor shrugged. "I must be. I wanted to."

"Why? Why did you want to die?" Clara asked, worry coloring her voice. "What happened?"

The Doctor shrugged, trying to be nonchalant but the effort wasn't convincing. "Lots of things. Too many things. Too many losses. For far too long." He freed his hands and rubbed his face. "Something has gone wrong. Otherwise I would have regenerated and been able to see." He turned to where he thought she was. "Clara, leave me. I've put you through enough already. Just take me somewhere and …. Are we in your Tardis?" He asked abruptly, almost sniffing the air.

"We are. And I'm not taking you anywhere. You are staying with me and you don't get a say in that." Her voice was firm and Clara clutched his shoulders, driving home the point.

"Bossy as ever," the Doctor tried to smile but she could see it had been too much for him. His eyes rolled back and Clara caught his head as he fell back onto the table, unconscious once more.


	2. Chapter 2

With the Doctor unconscious again, Clara stirred herself to make him more comfortable. She'd love to get him back to her bedroom off the console room but there was no way she could lift him off the tables. It was uncertain if she would do more harm than good if she tried to drag him. Ashildr's old room was even further away. She started to prepare the food the villagers had paid her with, just in case he awoke hungry. Clara kept checking on him, but the Doctor remained still and lifeless. The mere sight of him lying there so still there chilled her soul. In their long association, this was by far the longest time she'd ever seen him at rest. She could count the number of times she'd seen him sleep on one hand through their years together.

Her thoughts were roiling. _'We take forever to die.'_ What had he done now? God, what could **she** do? If only her Tardis were functional! She'd take him back to Gallifrey if nothing else. Even if they refused to help, then maybe the Time Lords would be decent enough to allow them to die together. Because Clara Oswald had no intention of going on alone any more. She wasn't the last of her kind, technically, but for all intents and purposes, she knew the life very well. The loneliness was lethal. For now though, the Doctor was back and she couldn't bear the thought of letting him go again.

The Tardis however, stayed stubborn and, in the end, a frustrated Clara threw the Gallifreyan instruction manual at the rotor. She'd found out long ago Ashildr had not understood as much of the book as she had pretended to. Gallifreyan text was still pretty much a deep, shrouded mystery to outsiders.

Finally, having exhausted all means of activity, Clara sat down beside the joined tables and watched the Doctor. To be honest, even this in itself was a joy. At least he hadn't changed yet. If she didn't know better, it appeared her former stick insect friend had become a tiny bit more muscular. He'd never be a weightlifter, her Doctor, but he didn't seem nearly as frail as he did in those early days of their travels together. To her eyes, oddly enough despite the fatigue, he looked younger than before. Maybe it was the long hair, maybe it was the clothes. But, except for the recent tension he'd been under, the Doctor looked more at home with this persona of himself. Or maybe Clara only hoped that was the case. But his appearance seemed an extension of the new found confidence he'd had during their last year together.

About an hour later, he began to stir again. Clara leaned forward, putting her hand on his cheek. "You're all right, Doctor. You're safe."

The Doctor opened his eyes and Clara felt a thrill of hope. The blue was showing through the white a bit more than before. His eyes moved until they found her face. Peering closely at her, he said softly, "You are here then."

Smiling, Clara took his hand. "You were expecting me to leave?"

The Doctor looked lost and surprisingly vulnerable. "I thought maybe I had imagined the whole thing." He looked away, straining to see exactly where he was. His eyesight was obviously better but not good. He also used the opportunity to turn his face away from her.

 _Still up to his old tricks then_. Warmth for this man flooded Clara's entire being. _A hug is a good way to hide your face. Foolish Doctor._ "Well, if you did, I am imagining the same thing."

Dawning looks of horror graced both their faces at the same time. "Er, you don't think it's the -"

"The Kantrifarr?" The Doctor shook his head. "I don't know." He tried to sit up. "But if we are in the dream world together, the least they could have done was found me a more comfortable place. My back is killing me!"

Clara laughed and assisted him to sit up and swing his legs over the side. "Do you think you can make it to my bedroom?"

The Doctor looked blank, more so with those semi milky eyes. "Why?"

"Seriously, you are as silly as ever!" Clara exploded. "So you can lie down on a bed, you daft man. Remember your memorable speech about a whole room for doing nothing but lying down?"

"Oh." The Doctor appeared to think it over and Clara immediately felt guilty for giving him such a hard time. It was obvious he was struggling with memory problems, physical problems and, please God, not dying problems. Being this Doctor however, he added waspishly, "Well, I still don't like lying down though. Air clear on that."

"Come on." Clara replied impatiently, slipping her arm around his waist and took more of his weight than she was sure he was aware he put on her. They shuffled off to her room, the Doctor bent over and moving slowly. He would not admit to pain but Clara knew pain was there just by the way he moved. After she lowered him to sit on a nearby chair while she pulled back the covers from her bed, his gaze went to a small silver frame. The Doctor had to pick it up and hold it right in front of his eyes to see it. It was a snapshot of him driving a car somewhere. He frowned.

Clara moved to stand beside him. "Osgood gave me that. She took it on her phone while you two were driving all over London during that Zygon thing. I," she shrugged, "printed it out."

The Doctor gave her an arch look. "Why?"

To his horror, he could see well enough to recognize Clara's eyes were moist. "Because I missed you so much. It was the one way I could still see you."

"Oh, Clara," the Doctor said in a choked voice. He reached up and pulled her close, his head resting on her ribs and her arms around him. For a while, they simply held each other.

 _ **DW DW DW**_

The Doctor insisted he wasn't hungry but he did bolt every bit of the food Clara sat down in front of him. And added his customary ton of sugar to his cup of tea. Finding her eyes watching him, with a fond smile on her lips, he asked, "What?"

Clara laughed, and shook her head. "You must be seeing better now. You didn't miss the cup with all the sugar."

He looked uneasy. "I can see some things, shapes mainly, light and dark. I just can't figure out why I'm still having these vision problems. The Monks cleared that up earlier."

"The Monks?" Clara asked in an 'of course' type of voice.

"Bill asked them to. I said no, don't sacrifice the world to save me but you know what human companions are. They don't do as they're told," he added tartly.

Clara smiled wistfully. "I like him already."

"Er, Bill is a female." The Doctor corrected carefully.

Clara frowned. "Should have known."

Judging by his off balance expression, evidently the Doctor decided silence was best for a number of reasons. Seeing him finish the last of the tea, Clara stood to remove the tray and set it aside. The Doctor lay back, looking drained and tired. "Do you want to talk about it?" Clara asked carefully.

The Doctor looked uneasy, almost haunted. "No."

"Good." Clara settled herself on the side of the bed. "I have plenty of time to listen."

Looking annoyed, the Doctor's eyebrows rose in irritation. "I have always adored the way you ignore me saying no. I just want to be on the record about that."

Clara giggled. "So noted. Proceed."

"I don't really remember everything," the Doctor confessed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I don't even know how I got here. Wherever here is. I have no memory of it."

"What do you remember?" Clara asked.

The Doctor got that uneasy look, the one he wore when he knew Clara wouldn't approve. "A thing happened with….. Missy," he mumbled.

Clara's face hardened. "You mean she is still around?" she asked belligerently. "Or should I say she was still around **you**?"

The Doctor tried to wave it off. "I didn't ask for her, Clara," he said defensively. "It was a Time Lord thing; a thousand year obligation as it was."

Eyes widening, Clara asked, "You were stuck with her for a thousand years?"

"As it turned out, not that long. Only about seventy five. I tried to turn her, Clara. She could be such a force for good in the universe. I thought I had won her over but her previous self turned up, with his smart mouth and round face and I lost her again. She went with him. Maybe. I'm still not sure, really. I think she was coming back to me but I don't know." Lost in bitter thoughts, the Doctor said distantly, "I got a lot of people killed. Bill. Nardole, eventually. Including me, I think." He suddenly shut his eyes with a hand over them. "Do we really have to do this right now?"

Clara, seeing his obvious pain and weariness, relented. "Oh, all right. But eventually I do want to hear the rest of it." She paused a moment. "Do you want to rest for a while?"

"Yes. No. I don't know. I hate resting." the Doctor admitted. "Wait, are we alone? Where is Ashildr, Lady Me, Mini Me, whatever she is calling herself these days?"

"Ashildr died, Doctor," Clara said somberly.

His eyes popped open. "What? How?"

"Some sort of virus on Sambla Minor V. She got sick but could never get better. Eventually she got worse and worse; the Mire chip inside her quit functioning. She passed peacefully."

The Doctor was silent. "I'm sorry, Clara." He passed a shaky hand over his brow. "I'm sorry for so many things. Ashildr is near the top of the list."

Giving him a small smile, Clara touched his cheek. "She didn't die cursing your name, if that is what you're worried about. She was ready to go and she had finally gotten past blaming you. She did however, remain an opportunist until the end. Twice the little rat tried to steal the Tardis from me after we fought over something."

The Doctor gave her a look. "But you were alone after her passing?'

Clara looked at the floor. "Yes. I thought I understood the loneliness you felt before. Turned out I only knew a fraction of it."

"Did you keep travelling?"

Clara smiled. "Yeah. Yeah, I did. Went to the Three Moon Fair on Gadsden Green."

The Doctor smiled. "Good choice. Love their purple fruit cocktails."

Clara laughed. "I thought you probably would. They are like a sugar high. I drank a couple in your honor, by the way." Her expression sobered. "It was fun for a while but then it just got so…. Lonely. I came here a few years back. Looked around but one day, without warning, the Tardis suddenly lost power and I've been stuck here ever since."

The Doctor nodded and looked over her head for a moment, pretending he couldn't see Clara being brave once again. He held out his arm. Clara accepted the silent invitation and crawled in beside him. Not hearing that double heartbeat in his chest was still disquieting but they drifted off to sleep together soon after anyway.

 _ **DW DW DW**_

"Clara!" A voice whispered loudly in her ear. "Clara, wake up! Seriously, you sleep even more than you used to."

Prying open an eye, Clara saw the Doctor sitting up, trying to get out of her bed, only she had him boxed in between the outer wall and her. "What's going on?" She asked muzzily.

"Well, I don't know, maybe I'd like to get up and stop lying here. Oh wait, maybe I'll just stay here because some tiny human insists on sleeping all day." The Doctor was full of his old impatience.

Sighing, Clara opened both eyes. As usual, she gave him a detailed once over. He still looked exhausted but the white milky film over his eyes seemed less opaque than yesterday. "How are you feeling?"

She half expected some sort of diversion but instead the Doctor subsided with what seemed suspiciously like a groan. "I feel like I've died." The sadness on his face was intense and painful to see.

Clara scrambled up. "What, wait, are you feeling worse?"

The Doctor immediately looked rueful. "No, not really." He stopped for a moment and Clara felt full force the weight of two thousand years of existence, regret and loss. "I'm just… tired. Really tired, Clara. But I absolutely cannot lie here any longer. This is driving me crazy."

"Okay, okay. But you lean on me if you feel dizzy. Can you see where you're going?"

"It's a little better," the Doctor said vaguely.

Grasping his arm, Clara helped him stand. He wobbled for a moment, then the eyebrows flared angrily and, with an arm around her shoulders and determination on his face, they left her room and moved to the windows of her diner to look out upon the countryside.

Even though neither of them should really feel the cold they were both startled to find the diner's windows frosted over and a definite chill in the air. Snow blanketed the ground outside and a strong wind buffeted the windows. It was a lonely, eerie sound.

 _ **DW DW DW**_

The Doctor sat on one of the diner's chairs, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, close to the frosty window looking out at a moonless night. He still couldn't really see good enough to state that for certain but Clara had confirmed it earlier. He wished he had something to do. He tried to fix the heat in the diner but there was no power. There was also no sonic screwdriver. No guitar. Itching to get into the Tardis console room, the Doctor longed to do a proper overhaul of the space time machine but in truth, he wasn't strong enough and his vision was problematic. Clara had fussed at him. He felt guilty. So, he sat here, useless.

He was appallingly weak. His mind was cloudy by hazy memories; pain, disaster, endless Mondasian Cybermen and… death. There was poor Bill, Nardole, Missy (what **had** happened there?) and the Master. Then they disappeared and he was in the snow and impossibly, there **he** was, the First Doctor, pompous as ever, the old man, and stealing his lines about not changing and being The Doctor. Well, **this** Doctor knew the regeneration fire better than any other Time Lord alive, certainly he'd done it more than most, but this whole thing it was so odd, so surreal. He had died, regenerated (Maybe? Maybe not?) and then ended up here on a dead planet with the frozen in time Clara Oswald. It could not get any stranger and he felt ill equipped to deal with it. He really was too old. Too tired to take this on anymore. This time he should have died and stayed dead. _Like he wanted._

He shook his head, trying to clear his dark thoughts. It was the not knowing that was driving him crazy. Would he still change? Or was this the final death? At any rate, he certainly didn't trust Rassilon. The Time Lords may have only given him a single extra regeneration. But how did he get here? For that matter, how did Clara get here? And where, exactly, was here? With his eyesight in the state it was in, he didn't recognize these stars, but it was hard to tell for certain. And with Clara's Tardis inoperative, there was no way to find out either.

Glancing over his shoulder through the darkness back where Clara slept in her room, his heart constricted into a tight knot of worry and misery. The Doctor knew only too well how he had destroyed her life. She had sacrificed herself before to be fragmented into his multiple time streams. She had turned away from a normal life with Danny Pink to go adventuring with him. Then she had lost her life trying to be like him. And, in a botched attempt to fix his mistake, the Doctor had left Clara in a half-life with a frozen heartbeat, a stolen Tardis and the unreliable Ashildr as a companion. He had thought by going away he was keeping her safe.

 _Wrong again, Doctor Idiot._

So, here they were again in their strange odyssey across time and space. What were their options? Did they have any options? The Doctor knew Clara would insist on staying with him and that in itself made him terribly conflicted. If he died here, it would be yet another tragedy she would have to bear just because she'd had the bad taste to stay with him. But what if he changed, regenerated into a man his impossible girl liked even better? A nice young man like before, with good manners (well, as good as the Doctor ever was) and charming. His stomach lurched at the very thought, until he realized he was being a jealous idiot over himself. _Moron._

However, maybe there was a chance Clara would want to be free of him with the right reasons and incentives, like any semi sane human being would. Maybe, if he could find some options and maybe if she had time to think it over, she would make the right decision this time.

A small hand rested on his shoulder, making him jump. "Hey. I looked around and you weren't there."

The Doctor turned to find Clara beside him, smiling in the glow of a lantern she carried. "I thought you were sleeping. Again, I might point out."

She laughed. "Shut up. I haven't slept so much in years. I must be relaxed although that would be a novelty with you around. What were you thinking about, sitting over here in the cold by yourself?"

"You. Me. Us." The Doctor looked horrified. This was stuff he never blurted out. Human emotions. _Ugh._

Clara sat down beside him, placing the lantern on the table. The soft glow illuminated the area they were in and the table top but not much more. "I think you need to rest. Don't worry so much."

The Doctor gave her an incredulous look. "Really? We have nothing to worry about?"

Clara gave him an intent look. "These last few years have been really hard for you, haven't they? You haven't been able to unwind for a long time, it seems. Not that you were ever any good at it before."

The Doctor faced her, his hand seeking hers over the table. "I worry about you."

"Don't." Clara was firm. "And don't give me that duty of care stuff either. Not unless I can worry about you just as much. That is non-negotiable, by the way."

"Clara," the Doctor leaned forward, "if I can get this Tardis repaired, will you leave here?"

She looked puzzled. "Of course I will." Then a dawning light came into her eyes. " **We** will leave together."

"You would be better off without me," the Doctor said sadly. When Clara started to protest, his hands waved her away. "No, really, you would. Things didn't go all that well lately. People got killed around me. I got them killed. The worst it's ever been. I lost another companion, Clara. To the Cybermen again, if you can believe that."

Clara started, sadness in her eyes as she relived the last days of Danny Pink. Soon, however, she rallied. "That was then, this is now. I can handle myself," Clara retorted stiffly. "I'm sorry to hear about Bill, was that the one? But sometimes these things happen. It still doesn't stop us from traveling with you, does it?"

The Doctor gave her a look. "Yeah, I remember that. All too well. Too many times. And then some of you all go off on your own and get yourselves killed."

"Look, I blew that Raven thing, all right? I admit it," Clara bristled, still defensive after all this time. "But I've looked after myself for a long time, Doctor, without your help."

"Clara, I-"

"Don't. Let's just don't do this tonight. You are exhausted and I'm even tired. Trying to keep an eye on you has wore me out more than the previous couple hundred years combined. There is nobody after us and we're obviously not going anywhere soon. It feels good to sleep again after so long. So, why don't you get some rest? Try it for a change. I think you're owed several thousand years of rest by now."

The Doctor looked irritated as she pulled on his arm to get him moving. "You'd be safer without me, Clara Oswald. I haven't even gotten to the Time Lords yet. They might still be after me." He paused, looking uncertain and a bit fearful. "I can't even remember what I should be worried about. It is all so hazy."

Clara resisted the urge to give him a sharp poke in the ribs. "Shut up. Sleep. Now."

"Maybe I don't want to stay with you? Did you think of that?" The Doctor erupted with frustration. "Get tired of getting bossed around," he mumbled.

Clara just gave him a sweet smile. "I thought you'd be used to it by now."

 _ **DW DW DW**_

Very early the next morning in the grey predawn, Clara was suddenly startled awake when bright white light flooded in from the open door of the nearby console room. There was the sound of machinery coming on and some blessed heat coming into the room as well although she was at a loss to explain why she was feeling cold these days. But the warmth felt wonderful. Throwing back the covers, she was not surprised to see the space next to her was empty.

With a joyful smile, Clara flung back the blankets and ran into the white console room of her Tardis. The Doctor was sitting on the floor, tools and bits of machinery from the console spread out beside him and his hands deep within the bottom console of the time rotor.

Glancing her way, the Time Lord gave her an impish grin. "I see you finally decided to get up, sleepy head." His hair was mussed and he'd changed to a different dark coat on top of the vest and white shirt. The coat he now wore was one she'd bought on a planet one day when she was missing him so much. It was like an earlier coat of his and it even had the red lining that was so like his old one. Clara was pleased to see it fit him well. Looking around, it was obvious he had been up for some time. Found the coat on the chair, found the tools and immediately tore the Tardis apart. It was like old times.

Clara laughed, really laughed, for the first time in decades it seemed. "You! You're awake already!" She took welcome note of the blue eyes that looked back at her in good humor and affection.

"Um, yeah, I hope so. Otherwise I was sleep walking and have made a mess I cannot fix." The Doctor retorted.

Clara moved closer and sat down beside him on the floor. _Last time we did this we were in the cloisters on Gallifrey,_ she remembered. Touching his arm, she asked, "How are you feeling?"

Giving her a hint of his old impatience, the Doctor said, "Fine."

"Yeaaah, I know, always fine." Clara replied soberly. "What about your hearts?"

The Doctor paused in his tinkering. "I seem to be just like you; no heartbeat." Abruptly switching gears, he replied jauntily, "But I can see again, Clara. See clearly. I figure that's a big improvement, worth two hearts any day." He reached inside the machinery, touched something and the time rotor made a noise almost like normal before it ground to a halt. Frowning, the Doctor asked waspishly, "Clara, didn't you or Ashildr do any maintenance on this poor machine? She's been abused terribly!"

Clara gave his shoulder (as his head was half in the column) a light smack. "Well, we looked for Time Lord Travelers Aid but they never showed up." Plucking at the sleeve of his coat, she pulled her companion's attention back to herself. "Doctor, do you think you can get the Tardis working again?"

"What? Oh yeah," the Doctor said expansively, with that endearing combination of brag and fingers crossed attitude he always carried. "And I expect you to be totally impressed when I do!" He smiled, the affection and humor shining in his expressive eyes.

Clara felt a rush of warmth, pride in her Doctor and his endless skills. Here was what had been missing for so long: **him**. The absolute joy that she had her impossible man back by her side again. It was overwhelming. Happiness flooded her soul. They might be able to leave this stale, sad planet. Suddenly the planet, the universe or whatever else intruded in their lives didn't mean very much at all _. They were together again._ The Doctor would get the Tardis working. "Oh, that's wonderful! Consider me impressed. Where are we going? Do you want to look for your Tardis?"

She could tell by the way his face fell that she had said something wrong, terribly wrong. His expression became dark and shuttered. She touched his arm again with more urgency this time. "Doctor, what is it? Tell me, please. You've worked it all out, haven't you?" This time Clara didn't let go and pulled his arm away from the time rotor and forced him to look at her. "Tell me," she repeated urgently.

The Doctor couldn't meet her eyes. "Clara, there is no going back for me. I think, well, I'm pretty sure, there is another me back in the universe I left behind. Another me who is the Doctor now, another me," his voice caught and roughened, "who has the Tardis now." He shook his head; it always so hard to hide what he really felt with Clara. Bill was so much easier to fool. "Another me who has a decent sonic screwdriver which I could really use right now," he added in disgust, struggling with the wiring.

Ignoring the evasion, Clara erupted in anger. "What? How can you be here if that happened? Surely they wouldn't be that stupid!" Reflecting on how that statement sounded, Clara rephrased, but her hatred of the Time Lords was never very far off. "Do you mean you regenerated back there but you're here now? How does that work?"

"I dunno." The Doctor finally did meet her eyes; his were red rimmed and shiny. "This face has never died before. But I have all new respect for Bow Tie; he did it and did it well."

Clara slid her hand into his, removing the everyday screwdriver he clutched from it. "So, if you are dead, chances are I am too, right?"

The Doctor looked beaten; his upbeat mood of triumph utterly gone. "I'm beginning to think that is the case, although your circumstances are different than mine, Clara. If I can get this Tardis working, it is possible you could go back. If this is another universe, that is. You are merely frozen in time. Not dead."

"Well, you can forget that rubbish right now," Clara flared. "I will NOT be parted from you again. I don't care what the Time Lords say, what the universe says, or what some ancient prophecy/urban legend says. I don't even care what **you** say. If you stay here, I will stay here. No arguments!" She softened. "Besides, you said you always wanted to look around the afterlife. This is our chance."

Suddenly clutching her hand, the Doctor said, "Look, Clara, I don't know exactly where we are. Is it the afterlife? I've no idea. I hate not knowing. Once, a previous me got stuck in E space for a while. It was like a parallel universe. This might be something like that. But I don't know what might happen. I might still, well, die again, as it were, and you might still be stuck here. You don't want that," he added intensely.

"And we might die together this time, officially. Or we might not." As agitated as the Doctor was, Clara felt only calm and great happiness as the burden of eternal loneliness lifted like low clouds along the coast on a sunny day. She moved her other hand to clutch both of his. "I had a taste of your life these past few… years? Decades? Centuries? I don't even know for how long." Tears sprang into her eyes. "I know it wasn't four and a half billion years, but it felt like it. I'm not losing you again."

The Doctor disengaged and brought his hand up, to brush away her tears. "Odd that you can still cry like that, being time locked." He frowned; his thoughts suddenly drifting.

"Odd that you can still cry being dead," Clara retorted weakly.

Clara's words brought him back immediately. "Time Lords do not cry. Really, I don't know where you get these weird ideas," the Doctor informed her gravely but his affronted disapproval was diluted by the warmth in those compelling eyes now blessedly free of white film.

"Oh, go on!" Clara snapped impatiently, almost ready to swat him again. "So, can you get this thing going or not?"

The Doctor gave her that insufferable aren't I clever grin. "Of course I can." He reached up and touched a switch. For the first time in years, the time rotor came alive. "The final touch needed was the imprint of a Time Lord. After they are dormant for a while, a Tardis will shut down if not properly bonded."

"Oh, you weren't being clever at all then. Just a trick of genetics," Clara retorted.

The Doctor gave her that full on smile he used so rarely in their early days. "I'm always clever," he announced with insufferable pride. His face softened and his eyes glistened. "Are you sure you are ready for a brand new adventure, Clara Oswald? Wherever it leads? No idea where we're going or even where we are? Or who we are?"

She leaned forward and kissed his cool lips. Neither of them had much body heat these days but really, who cared? "None of that stuff matters to me. We're together. Let's go see what's out there," Clara suddenly stopped, abruptly. "Well, maybe not yet."

The Doctor looked puzzled but his eyes looked stricken. "You do want to try and go back?"

Clara made an impatient noise. "No. Of course not. But maybe we can help these people here, before we leave. They have a miserable existence. Do you think you can restore some of their civilization?"

Looking thoughtful, the Doctor pondered. "I don't know." He scowled. "I don't even know what's going on here. The Tardis was Time Lord technology; I have no idea what these people use. Or used to have."

"Let's take a look around and see. Unfamiliarity never stopped you before." Clara stopped suddenly.

The Doctor gave her a look. "What?"

"I think I know how you got here, Doctor. The Tardis sent you. **Your** Tardis. Sent you to me." Clara stared at him intently.

"Clara, that is the craziest idea I've ever heard. The Tardis just doesn't go off and…. " his voice trailed off, his mouth worked but no words came out. The Doctor shrugged. "Crazy," he muttered less than convincingly.

"Reasonable," Clara corrected smugly. "If there is another you back there, she knew I would take care of you here. I would rescue you, like a damsel in distress," she added mirthfully, poking him in the arm.

The Doctor sighed, irritated. "I heard that one before. It's really offensive!"

"I take back everything I ever said about the old cow," Clara said softly. _Had to be it. The Tardis sent him here. She sent a sincere silent thank you to the blue box that disliked her so much at first._

The Doctor was studying her face. "Clara, don't sentimentalize the Tardis. She isn't in the lonely hearts club business. It was probably something else," he trailed off vaguely, looking a bit disturbed – and puzzled. He was obviously thinking and not wanting to admit his conclusions.

"Never mind," Clara said with a sunny smile. "You can show me wonders again, Doctor. Just like before. We have a whole new universe to explore."

"If you insist," the Doctor grinned, threw a switch and to her immense delight, the time rotor moved and the Tardis sprang fully to life. Clara laughed, her brown eyes dancing in happiness.

The Doctor watched as his companion sat next to him, her face shining with excitement. He himself still felt more than a little off balance. The massive guilt was still there, bubbling just under the surface. Was he really ready to go on again? Or would he be **allowed** to go on again? Also, he had to admit, this theory of Clara's about the Tardis threw him off, just a bit. _Would she really do something like that for him, this version of him, when she should be caring for the new Doctor in his place._ _This had never happened before. Why now? Why here? Why to Clara?_

No answers, no logic. But for now, the Doctor would not, could not, destroy Clara's happiness. And he had to admit, he was overjoyed to be back with his incomparable impossible girl once more. Perhaps he didn't deserve her but she was back in his life and for once, he would try to just go with it and not torture himself or her with predictions of doom and imminent death.

In the name of getting into the moment, the Doctor did something he would never before allow himself to do. He leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead. Clara was surprised but grabbed his head and returned the kiss to his lips fervently. The Doctor flapped his arms a time or two but soon stopped. They continued like that because there was no one else around in their world.

 _Which was just the way they liked it._

 **Reviews are appreciated.**


	3. Chapter 3

_Author's Notes: I decided to add some more chapters to this story, largely because I'm STILL in denial that the Twelfth Doctor is leaving. It seems I won't get over this regeneration. Anyway, please bear in mind these chapters have been written BEFORE the Twice Upon A Time Christmas special._

 _Thank yous to all of you who followed or favorited this story._

 _Special thanks to those who left reviews. Extra special thanks to my friends who read the story, not even having been Doctor Who fans. Extra extra special thanks to Macex, who edited the first two chapters._

 _These chapters are not beta'd; apologies in advance._

"It's happening again!" Clara shouted. "We're losing power, just like before!" She held onto the center console for dear life as her Tardis bucked around her like an out of control off road vehicle.

On the other side of the console, the Doctor fought the controls, racing around, flipping switches, throwing levers and watching the monitor as the planet they thought they were leaving seemed to be pulling them back once again. "Somehow we're losing power at a tremendous rate. I can't increase our velocity enough to overcome the drag the planet is exerting on the Tardis." He frowned. "This can't happen! Nothing is more powerful than a Tardis engine thrust."

Clara watched in frustration and fear as the planet loomed ever larger on the viewer monitor. _Just like before._ She thought she had escaped being marooned on this dead, strange planet and again, it had pulled her Tardis back into its orbit. In fact, the Tardis was now falling at a higher rate of speed than before. "Do something!" She yelled. "We're going to crash!"

The Doctor never took his eyes off the monitor. Sweat dotted his brow but his hands never stopped flying over the controls. "We'll be on the tropical side of the planet this time," he grunted as he spun more dials. "Warmer at least."

"If we survive," Clara snapped tartly.

When they hit the surface, it was a hard jolt but nothing was damaged beyond repair and, other than being thrown to the floor, both the Doctor and Clara were unhurt.

Staring at each other, neither spoke. They had been so happy at the idea of returning to the stars again, neither had actually thought of failure. The Doctor had been sure he had repaired the energizer problems; Clara was sure of the Doctor's skill. Now, it seemed they were back to square one and neither was happy about it.

 _ **DW DW DW**_

 _ **Two weeks later**_

Well, nobody said it was going to be perfect, did they?

Clara Oswald assured herself this was simply life as normal with the Doctor again. Well, all right, maybe she was a little bit at fault too but honestly! If there was a more maddening man in the galaxy, she didn't want to meet him. But this would soon blow over and he'd be back and she'd let him know how entirely unacceptable and childish his behavior was.

 **When** he came back.

And he would. Soon. Bit overdue now probably but nothing to worry about.

But….

Two nights ago they'd had a tremendous row, just like the old days right after he'd regenerated into an intractable Scotsman masquerading as an all knowing Time Lord. Clara knew the Doctor was frustrated; the weird planet they were marooned on had prevented them from leaving a second time. All the repairs the Doctor made to Clara's Tardis only lasted for a short time and then they were stuck again without power, only this time on nearly deserted side of the planet. The Doctor, irritable and tired, had erupted when the console had again exploded in sparks and fire. He'd had a full meltdown, as males were wont to do when their well-ordered repairs in their well-ordered lives went astray.

So, maybe Clara shouldn't have laughed. Maybe she shouldn't have made some cutting comments about Time Lords and their faulty technology. She was snippy and on edge herself and, oh look, her mouth wouldn't stop talking. A familiar fault back again.

But, Clara assured herself for the twentieth time, she was absolutely right to insist they needed food. Well, technically she didn't, of course, but he did. And the idiot had stopped eating for the first time since he'd literally dropped from the sky back into Clara's life. The Doctor had constantly been munching on something since his return; he was eating like Clara had never observed him before. Finally admitting this had something to do with regeneration, (but naturally declining to elaborate) he had suddenly stopped eating when he noticed the dwindling food supply as her Tardis had stopped magically supplying them as it always did in the past. The Doctor also stopped sleeping; something that was hardly a new thing. But what was new; this ever presents weakness he had these days. Clara had caught him dropping tools, rubbing his face, his hair and his eyes repeatedly. His eyes were nearly always watery and shiny and she knew he was in pain again. Naturally he wouldn't admit it though.

Thinking herself the voice of reason, Clara donned her storyteller's clothing again and started forth to the lone nearby settlement. She insisted the Doctor couldn't come along; it would destroy the mystique of her persona. Well, okay, yeah, she was worried about his health and thought it better to keep him safe in the Tardis. But no, the idiot was deeply offended and went off on her. Returning the favor had felt great as Clara left two nights ago, full or righteous anger and the release of pent up frustration and worry.

 _Now, not so great._

Finding the one forlorn settlement nearby, she had gotten the food all right. Told a smashing story about brave Clara Oswald defeating the evil witch known as Missy and saving a foolish Time Lord from his mistakes in judgement along the way. Fired with emotion, she had went all out and the villagers had showered her with food, some herbs and even some old leftover technical thingys she thought might please the Doctor. Laden with her treasures, Clara returned in a triumphant mood late last night - to an empty Tardis.

The console room brightly lit as were the lights in her bedroom. He had restored some power then. But she couldn't find the Doctor anywhere.

For the rest of the night and right through the next day, Clara spent her time cursing his name and telling herself if he'd hurt himself it was all on him. But as the sun fell and the twin moons rose, her worry became a viable living thing eating her soul.

If she could felt exhaustion, she would have fallen asleep immediately. But when she closed her eyes, worry set in and Clara replayed every word they had fired at each other that night and wondered again why she hadn't said this or done that.

Sitting in the darkened diner, she stared out the window, not that she could see all that much in the dark. A gentle rain had started outside and the sound almost lulled her asleep.

 _God, I cannot lose him. Not again. Why, oh why do you always have to have the last word, Clara Oswald? Your mouth is a lifeform of its own. You know he is still traumatized. Why couldn't you cut him some slack?_

Suddenly lightning flashed and a few seconds later, thunder rolled around the small valley they were now parked in. The rain picked up intensity and a wind came up, whipping the trees around.

 _And the Doctor is out there in it. Alone. Hurting._

Suddenly having the last word wasn't so important. Clara watched the storm for a while and then finally went back into her room. It would be useless to search for him in the dark. She thought she might have a good cry but instead she remained stubbornly dry eyed.

 _ **DW DW DW**_

Clara wasn't exactly sure what had awoken from her light, broken sleep but right away, she knew something had changed. For one thing, it was noticeably cooler. Dampness pervaded everything. Rain perhaps? But hope rose like a kite in the wind and she threw back the covers and headed out to the diner area.

Sitting in the darkness on a diner chair, staring out into the rain and lightning sat the Doctor. Clara frowned; he was nearly slumped in the chair and she could tell just by the way he was hunched he was cold. She hurried back and snatched a throw off her bed.

Clara walked softly behind him but the Doctor heard her anyway and said wearily, "Yes, I'm back, Clara. Like the bad penny, as you humans say."

Clara smiled. "Oh shut up. Self-pity doesn't become you." She dragged a chair over next to him and held out the throw. "Here; you're cold." He was drenched; water still ran down his face in little rivulets from his hair.

"No, I'm not," the Doctor protested automatically but it lacked his usual fire. She ignored him and placed it around his shoulders. Tucking it around him, she leaned in and kissed his cheek. "Don't you ever do that to me again."

To her surprise, the Doctor leaned into her touch. "Clara, I'm sorry. I just can't figure out why nothing works on this planet. It is driving me crazy. And it's…."

Clara moved her chair right next to his. "Go on." Her hand remained on his cheek.

The Doctor rubbed his eyes, distance between them reestablished. "I don't know."

Clara knew that voice; evasion. She dropped her hand. "Then tell me what you think. Something has upset you, therefore it upsets me. Tell me."

The Doctor shrugged. "You'll just get mad."

Smiling, Clara replied softly, "Never stopped you before."

"Okay." The Doctor turned toward her, intensity shimmering in his eyes. "Did you ever stop to think maybe I'm the cause of all of this?"

Clara frowned. "What? You can't fix everything all the time, Doctor. I know you're almost all powerful but some things aren't meant to be."

The Doctor made a soft scoffing noise. "Yeah. Yeah, that's true. But maybe the thing that isn't meant to be is me."

Not liking the sound of this, Clara asked slowly, "What are you saying?"

The Doctor looked bleak. "Maybe the universe really does need me to die, Clara. It is the new Doctor's time now; I should be gone. Maybe it is my presence that is causing all of this chaos. Upsetting the laws of time."

"I don't think so," Clara declared heatedly. "My Tardis broke down long before you ever got here Mr. I Am Responsible For Everything Wrong. And you said earlier you thought this was a different universe."

Shrugging, the Doctor replied, "Maybe. Maybe not. Time works differently here, on this planet as well as the one before. I can feel it. It moves much slower here. I had already been dying in our universe long before I got here."

Giving him a sharp look, Clara said, "Yeah, about that. When are you going to tell me what happened?

The Doctor didn't meet her eyes. "I did already."

"You told me some stuff; the rest you said you didn't remember. But something is certainly wrong; I know you aren't feeling well. I know the pain has returned. Your healing energy is gone and there hasn't been a sign of regeneration starting. And now you're telling me all of our problems are tied to you? I'm not an idiot and you should know it by now." She finished in a huff.

Incredibly, the Doctor smiled; a real smile that lit up his face and his eyes. "Clara, Clara, Clara. It's wonderful to see you back in fine form."

Normally the Doctor's smile was something Clara could never resist. Not this time though. "I just want you to talk to me. Tell me honestly what you think. Nothing you say could ever make me turn away from you. I'm overjoyed we are here, together again but instead, you're ill and telling me all these far fetched vague theories about being dead." To her great chagrin, tears stung her eyes.

The Doctor sat, stunned for a moment. "All right." He said quietly. "I've already told you most of this. I still don't recall everything; my memories are very hazy. I've been holding off regenerating for some time, Clara. Being trapped in the confession dial for so long, dying so many times – it took a lot out of me. I have felt the end coming for a while now. But I didn't want to regenerate. I'm two thousand years old and I'm tired. I don't want to go through getting a new face, being someone else, relearning everything and going through the entire painful process again. I don't have the strength for it. At least I didn't think I did. But, of all people, I met my first self, there on Antarctica, doing the same thing. Refusing to regenerate. I began to realize it was going to happen, with or without my permission. It took longer because I was so weak. But I finally died. Then when I woke up, I was here on your Tardis"

Clara hardly dared speak. It was so unlike her best friend to speak of his true feelings so openly. And her heart ached that she wasn't there to help him through all of this. Also, it was so upsetting to even hear about that horrible confession dial again. A hell he put himself through for four and a half billion years, just to save her life. With difficulty, she kept the emotion out of her voice and asked, "Why do you think it is you that is causing the Tardis problems?"

He shrugged. "I dunno." He visibly braced himself. "I would like you to try and take off without me."

Clara's eyes flashed. "No. Not this again." She said flatly.

"I've gotten nearly everything repaired," the Doctor carried on like she hadn't spoken. "And it would eliminate one potential problem. If you are able to leave without me, we would know then it was my presence that was keeping you marooned here."

"And if I leave and can't get back, I just think, oh well, tough luck to you!" Clara snapped angrily. "No. Absolutely not. We go together or we stay here together. It's my Tardis, I get to say where we go and when."

The Doctor looked irritated. "I didn't steal it for **you** exactly. We needed a way off Gallifrey, if you recall."

"I recall **everything** about Gallifrey;do you?" Clara fired back.

Stung, the Doctor got up and walked back into the control room _. All that talk about the memory block doing nothing to him was obviously a lie as well._ Clara sat out in the diner, still steaming. _Let him go pout and get over this self-sacrificing idiocy. Otherwise she would smack him into the next strange galaxy!_

But she felt uneasy, all the same.

 _ **DW DW DW**_

Clara stomped ahead through the teeming undergrowth. Honestly, this part of the planet was almost rainforest like, with humidity, surprisingly thorny plant life and carnivorous insects. She hated it.

She was still livid at the Doctor and his stupid idea that she try and leave without him. They'd only just found each other again and here he was, trying to send her away again. No! No way.

There was also the nagging worry that he might die on her this time round. He seemed to be slowly getting worse and the helpless frustration she felt bordered on rage. Her mind rejected the very idea. Technically they were both dead anyway; why bother with a formality?

Dimly aware that the Doctor was shouting something behind her, Clara turned. She saw him stop, bend over, hands on his knees and gasping for breath. He obviously was unable to keep up with her.

Her face softened and she turned to go back to him. Only then did she realize there was a second sound nearby.

It was the dreaded sound of mechanical men stomping ever closer.

Suddenly a form burst out of the bushes and two rusty Cybermen burst through, followed by one creepy looking Cyberman with a cloth face and some prehistoric looking gear on his head.

The Doctor caught up with her and skidded to a halt in front of cloth face with one of the most stricken looks Clara had ever seen upon his face, his eyes unable to look away from the hideous face of the cloth Cyberman.

Clara felt an icy stab of fear and grief herself. She wasn't sure what the cloth faced one was but she recognized all too well the creature Danny Pink had been turned into.

However, now there were more important issues as a mechanical hand cruelly latched onto her arm and tightened. Clara couldn't help it; she screamed in pain. One of the first Cybermen to appear had grabbed her.

"Cease this noise," the other Cyberman intoned. Cloth Face said nothing.

The Doctor snapped out of whatever hell he had mentally transported back to and moved to help her. But cloth faced Cyberman blocked him at every turn and they appeared to be at a standoff.

The Cyberman who held her kept snatching at her throat. Clara twisted away but soon the silver behemoth had her by the hair which he grabbed painfully.

"Stop resisting." The Cyberman ordered giving her hair another savage pull as well as continuing to put pressure on her arm.

She heard some noise behind her but Clara couldn't speak, trying futilely to free herself. She couldn't see the Doctor or the other two Cybermen.

Suddenly, the Cyberman's head was swept away in a shower of sparks. An inhuman mechanical scream followed as the head bounced on the ground. Clara only just stepped aside in time.

"Handles, Part Two," the Doctor said triumphantly, swinging a long rusty, muddy metal rod in his hands. Behind him, the second Cyberman lay twitching on the ground, sparks flying from its chest. "Are you all right?" He asked urgently as Clara tried to free her hair from the still standing part of the Cyberman while the Doctor tried to free her arm.

"Doctor, what about the other one? The creepy one?" Clara gasped.

"Gave him a blast with my newly reconstructed not finished yet sonic screwdriver," the Doctor announced smugly. "He's out for the co-"

He was cut off by the whine of blaster fire.

The Doctor's body arched, his arms out flung as he felt to his knees. Behind him, the cloth faced Cyberman straightened up and finally spoke. In an eerie, sing song mechanical voice, it said, "Violent trespassers will be eliminated."

Glancing behind him, his face contorted in pain, the Doctor grimaced. "Being killed twice by you lot already. I'm having a really bad time of it." His eyes rolled up and he collapsed into Clara's arms.

"No!" Clara snatched up the fallen metal rod, red hot fury burning her veins. Shifting the Doctor aside, she jumped up, just as the creature bent over, hands on its chest unit, apparently ready to fire again.

With all her might, Clara swung and connected with the chest unit and the hand in front of it. There was a distorted scream of pain and she drew back to swing again.

"STOP THIS NOW!"

A man strode into the battle, pressing a button on a small black box that looked like a remote. "Deactivate," he ordered. The wounded Cyberman slumped over, motionless.

Clara raced back to the motionless Doctor, dropping the rod beside her. Also noticing the newest version of the sonic lying beside him, she quietly pocketed that.

"You two have wreaked havoc on my defense guards," the stranger said in disgust, looking at the Cyber carnage.

"Do you always program them to attack first, anything or anyone?" Clara snapped. She continued to try and rouse the Doctor but there was no response.

"He's all right," the strange little man, who was not very tall, replied dismissively. He seemed more interested in his broken Cybermen. "Maller is my oldest model; he can only fire a half power energy ray. Your friend got a very nasty jolt and will be tingling with pain for a few days but he'll be fine."

"He wasn't fine before this!" Clara bit out. "She continued to lightly slap the still face in front of her. "Doctor, come on. Time to wake up. She leaned down, closer to his face. "Come back to me."

The stranger's interest rose. "He should be coming around soon." For the first time, uneasiness colored his voice.

The Doctor however, still lay in a heap, unresponsive. "He'll come back to me. He always does," Clara said with a confidence she did not feel.

The stranger came closer and Clara automatically reached for the metal rod. Holding up his hands, he said, "There is no need for more violence. My name is Jekab. I own this estate we are standing on. This is an utterly lawless place; my guards attack any intruders who trespass upon my land. But they do not kill."

Clara thought of her aching shoulder. "Good to know," she observed sourly.

Before she could stop him, Jekab reached over and touched the Doctor's throat, snatching his hand back immediately. "This man is dead," he said in surprise. "But that blast was not that strong," he added in wonderment.

"No, he's not," Clara retorted. Jekab's eyebrows rose. "There are ….. extenuating circumstances," she added defensively.

Jekab stood staring, obviously evaluating her sanity. He cleared his throat. "All right. I'll bring back transportation for him. Would you like to accompany me?"

"I would not," Clara said abruptly and turned her attention back to the still figure lying on the damp, moss covered ground.

Jekab shrugged. "As you wish. I shall return with a cart to convey him back to my shelter. We will be out of the elements then."

"Yeah, good." Clara never looked around but held one of the Doctor's hands, smoothing his hair with her other hand. "Come on, Doctor. Don't leave me again." Jekab left and Clara stared briefly at the cloth faced Cyberman who staggered after the short mysterious man. She wondered if she could hate the Cybermen more than she already did.


	4. Chapter 4

Jekab's place was a grandiose jumble of spare parts of different origins. It was a large rambling structure on a primitive planet with a harsh climate. A large, hot sun was setting in the purple hued sky before they arrived. To Clara's sharp annoyance, Jekab had wasted time bundling up pieces of his rubbish Cybermen before loading the Doctor.

Through it all, the Doctor remained unconscious. His complexion was as gray as his hair and Clara fought a fierce internal battle to keep from screaming. Between his stillness and Jekab's dithering, her nerves were frayed.

When they arrived in a dark, black walled room with alien equipment, Jekab, with Clara's highly distrustful permission, attached some monitor leads to the Doctor's head, arms and chest.

His frowning face reflected in the greenish hue of a computer screen, Jekab looked up sharply. "This man is a Time Lord!"

"Yeeeesss" Clara said slowly, standing next to the doctor's bed, hovering over him protectively.

Jekab produced something like an overlarge, squarish box which emitted a weak forlorn whine as he aimed it at Clara.

"According to these readings, you are human. And you're both dead. No heartbeats. I think explanations are in order, this time from your side, not mine," Jekab said quietly.

 _ **DW DW DW**_

When the Doctor woke up, he was in a darkened room lying on an uncomfortable table hooked up to some alien lash up of a diagnostic machine. _Rubbish looking thing._ Nothing new, of course, waking up in a strange place with no clear idea of where he was; just another day in the life of the Doctor. But hearing Clara talking in a hushed tones to a stranger in another room close by brought an unsettled feeling.

He sat up gingerly; waiting for the wash of dizziness and weakness to hit and it did not disappoint. It seemed like he felt this way for forever. The heat did not help matters. After a moment though, it had passed (somewhat) and the Doctor had eagerly detached himself from the machinery so he could find Clara.

Swinging off the cot, he snatched up his coat; he just didn't feel right without it. Besides, Clara had got it and it now replaced the shredded coat he had arrived in. That alone made it special. He quickly moved to the door, closer to the voices.

Standing in the semi darkness of the lab doorway, the Doctor saw Clara with a small, dapper looking man with silver hair and a goatee. His clothes were elegant; a mix of styles but mainly a respectful looking knock off of an Edwardian suit. No cravat though but he still wore the vest and coat, despite the heat. Clara stood beside him, speaking softly. She looked distraught. The small man watched her, standing way too close for the Doctor's comfort level and making small noises of sympathy.

Suddenly, the man called out, "Are you remaining in the darkness or would you like to come out now?"

Irked that he had been noticed, the Doctor came forward. Clara came over to him immediately with an acutely relieved expression on her face. Taking hold of his arm, she asked, "How do you feel?"

The Doctor, seeing she seemed unharmed, gave her a brief smile. "Fine. You?" Clara nodded and the Doctor turned. "But I don't think I caught your name?" He asked the man watching their reunion.

The dapper little man sketched a bow. "I'm known as Jekab."

Lifting an eyebrow, the Doctor asked, "Known as?"

Jekab smiled. "It is what I'm called."

"Interesting," the Doctor replied, not bothering to hide his skepticism. "Are those your Cybermen pals?"

The instant tension between the two men was palpable so Clara decided she had better step in. "Yes they are his.. They are, um, guards," she said hurriedly. "Can you tell us where we are? The instruments on our ship have gone on the blink and we were never able to ascertain our position."

Jekab laughed, the Doctor frowned and Clara was confused. "Forgive my mirth; it is just that everything has gone 'on the blink' for several hundred years now. As for a name, most simply call it _La Planeta de los Muertos._ " He shrugged. "Forgive my indelicacy but it seems very apropos where you two are concerned. "

Clara glanced at the Doctor but he remained very cryptic so she asked, "May I inquire how you got here?"

Jekab laughed again, an oddly grating sound. "Same as you, I crashed, if I am to believe a time locked human and a dead Time Lord."

"He isn't dead," Clara snapped.

"Well, he is most certainly in the death cycle. Would you like to join in, Doctor, or have us continue to discuss you as if you were already dead?" Jekab asked insolently.

The Doctor gave Jekab an impudent glance and started to move around the room, eyeing the worn furnishings and picking up to briefly examine the few gadgets that lay strewn about. He turned, pasted an insincere smile on and said, "You have talked quite a bit but actually said nothing. Since you seem to know a lot about us, by all means, tell us about yourself."

Catching the tone of veiled menace, Jekab decided to play nice and composed himself into a 'hail fellow well met' attitude. "There is astonishingly little to tell. I had lost my beloved wife in the Begrosian plague epidemic of 05. I was a top medical researcher so the loss was doubly bitter for me as I was unable to find a cure to save her. Afterwards, I packed up my star yacht and left, determined to find an isolated planet that I could devote my life to finding a cure to that dreaded disease. Only one went with me; my devoted research assistant, Sharona Harvo. She had lost family to the plague as well and was as determined as I was to the cause. When we entered this quadrant however, my yacht lost power and we crashed on this planet, nearly 350 years ago. My dear friend Sharona was injured in the crash and again, despite my best efforts, I could not save her." He waved his hand around. "Through the years I cannibalized my ship and built this structure. That crude settlement nearby I do some trading with." Jekab started lighting some candles around the room as darkness fell outside. "I have to save what power I have for my equipment," he explained. "Most of the others who have crashed and been marooned on this planet have primarily been hostile. Hence my improvised home security system, which you two decimated," he added acerbically.

Remembering the Mondasian Cyberman, the Doctor snapped angrily, "Find something else next time. Cybermen do not make good watch dogs; they always shoot first and never question afterward."

His unusually strident tone made Clara shoot him a curious look. The Doctor tried to compose himself but it was disheartening what a single glance at a firing Mondasian Cyberman could do to his psyche. It brought back dark memories of Bill, Nardole, Missy and the stupid round faced Master back on the doomed colony ship. And being electrocuted and shot. His body remembered even if he willed his mind to ignore the trauma. The stars only knew what seeing the Cybermen again had done to Clara but she was handling it better than he was, it seemed.

Noticing Clara's obvious concern, he cleared his mind. "350 years? You must be a long lived species?"

"Yes," Jekab said simply. He did not offer anymore.

The Doctor tried again. "I noticed some of your equipment in there. Where do you get the power to run them?"

"I had brought two large generators with me. Normally they would easily power my establishment for two months. But the years have taken their toll; increasingly my repairs are more jerry rigged and haphazard. In this place, I have to let them recharge for a week after using them for a day."

"Have you got any theories about why this planet deactivates and de-energizes everything?" The Doctor asked.

"Giant magnetic fields of some sort," Jekab said offhandedly. "They create an immense dampening field on any sort of energy source. If you crashed immediately, your sensors would not have had the power to warn you of the danger. The area around here is littered with crashed spaceships. I only found the fields after years of research. It really is quite fascinating if only," he paused with genuine sorrow on his even features, "it didn't go on for so long."

"You've been alone here since Sharona died?" Clara asked quietly.

Jekab looked uncomfortable. "Yes. It is a bit ironic; I wanted solitude and now I have had it for centuries. It was not what I had anticipated."

"It never is," the Doctor said simply.

"We're sorry for your loss," Clara said sincerely. "Did you not try to communicate with the settlement nearby? There are people there."

Jekab gave a dismissive shrug. "They are the remnants of crashed vessels, uniformly fearful, ignorant and hostile."

Clara frowned. "They weren't to me."

"Ah, well," Jekab smiled without warmth, "perhaps they just like you better than they do me. I found them very boring. But a pretty face is always welcome."

Noticing Clara's look of annoyance, the Doctor advised, "You'd better not dig yourself in any deeper." He stopped his pacing long enough to begin searching his pockets, pulling out all manner of minutiae.

Clara held it up with a grin. "I have your sonic, if that's what you're looking for. You dropped it back there in the jungle."

Jekab looked curiously. "Sonic technology? Oh, I am curious about that." He paused. "It looks rather, er, crude, you know."

The Doctor snatched it out of Clara's hand and pocketed it. "Haven't had the time – or materials – to refine it yet," he mumbled.

Jekab smirked. "Of course. Now I have neglected my duties as host for far too long. Let me show you to some quarters you can rest in before the evening meal. I do not have much but I'm pleased to share."

"I'll bet I don't like it," the Doctor muttered to Jekab's departing back.

 _ **DW DW DW**_

In a small alcove, Clara washed her face. Thankfully water was plentiful on this side of the planet, it seemed. Behind her in the larger room, sitting on side of the lone bed, the Doctor fiddled with his homemade sonic screwdriver, bemoaning everything from a lack of parts to faulty power sources to giant magnetic fields.

For once though, Clara barely listened. She was very upset and she suspected the Doctor knew it but chose to natter on in his let's divert your attention way.

However, Clara would not be diverted. "What did he mean?" She interrupted the monologue suddenly.

"Huh?" For a guy who did a lot of interrupting himself, the Doctor was flat footed when it happened to him. Especially when it was Clara.

She threw down the towel and faced him. "When Jekab said you were a dead Time Lord? Does he know something? Something else you haven't told me?"

Taking a deep breath, the Doctor put down his screwdriver project. "Nothing you don't already know, Clara. I am a dead Time Lord. We've been through all of that."

"No." Clara's denial was automatic.

The Doctor sighed. "We knew this from before, Clara. I don't really know how long I have left; this has never happened before. I have already extended this version of myself far beyond the norm; I should have died back on the colony ship. Instead, I went to Antarctica and had an adventure with my first self. But I'm on borrowed time. That's why it is so important to find out what Jekab knows about this place. We might be able to return you to your own time period."

Clara exploded, eyes glistening. "I don't have a time period, Doctor! I'm like you now. I travel in time and space. With **you**. Why do you persist in believing that I want to go back to teaching school again? I enjoyed it but it's in the past. This is my life now."

The Doctor stared. "I did."

Confused, Clara asked, "What?"

"I went back to teaching school. For seventy five years." The Doctor said, looking tired.

"So were you bored?" Clara asked with an impish grin as she sat down beside him.

"Unbelievably," the Doctor replied with a twinkle in his eyes.

Clara scooted closer. "And so back to my original question. Why is it so important to you that I go back? Why are you so set on this?"

"Because I don't want you to!" The Doctor burst out angrily, throwing down the screwdriver on the cushion beside him.

Clara was surprised at the sudden change of mood. "What are you saying? Don't want me to what?"

The Doctor turned anguished eyes on her. Taking her hand, he said urgently, "I don't want you to be like me, Clara. It is a very long, very lonely life, full of watching people you love die. In my arrogance, I condemned both you and Ashildr to eternal loneliness and I'm so very, very sorry." His voice broke and he suddenly turned away, releasing her hand but not before she saw the tears in his eyes.

"Hey," Clara reached for his shoulder and pulled him closer. "Don't be so upset. You saved Ashildr's life; she would have died a teenager if you hadn't acted. There was no time to think it through. You decided on compassion rather than scientific detachment. Nothing wrong with that. As for me, you did not condemn me to anything. I made the mistake that brought the raven after me; you didn't even know about it until it was too late. Don't worry about me so. I knew the risks of traveling with you; I'm not a child. And I'd do it all over again in a second. Right now though, my worry for you outweighs everything else. So no more fretting about 'my state. It is you we have to sort out."

Clara forced him to look at her. The Doctor hurriedly rubbed at his eyes and tried a fleeting gun that quickly turned into a grimace. He tried to speak but nothing came out.

"What? What is it?" Clara felt panic rising. The Doctor was shuddering, sweat popping out on his brow.

"Clara, I-" Eyes rolling back in his head, the Doctor went into a seizure.

Clara started screaming as she wrestled with a suddenly rigid Time Lord who could no longer hear her.

She was hanging on for dear life when Jekab rushed into the room.


	5. Chapter 5

_My apologies for such a short chapter. A thing happened and I didn't catch it in time. More to come shortly._

"There." Jekab straightened wearily. "I think he is stabilized for now."

Clara Oswald stood on the other side of the table, eyes riveted on the Doctor. He was mercifully quiet now but the fear was etched deeply on her pale face. "Do you know what is causing this?"

Jekab looked incredulous. "Goodness, me, no. He should be dead. He IS dead. I don't know what is keeping him going now."

Clara didn't answer, instead reaching for the Doctor's hand and clutching it in both of hers.

Jekab softened. "Well, perhaps, I do know what is keeping him going. If I had a lovely young friend such as you standing by me, I'd do my best to keep going as well."

In a distracted voice, Clara spoke, mainly to herself, it seemed. "But he was getting better. Stronger even. He got the Tardis working again. But then it failed when we tried to leave and since we landed here, he's gotten worse and worse."

"Tardis?" Jekab inquired.

"Our ship," Clara answered but said nothing more. She could not take her eyes off the Doctor.

Jekab looked thoughtful – and interested. "Do you know what happened to him? How he got kill-,er, in this condition? Jekab amended hastily.

"I wasn't with him but he told me there were Cybermen involved. We both have reasons to hate them." Clara's eyes were utterly cold.

"Hmm," Jekab studied the readings in front of him on the machinery. "Could explain it, I suppose. Time Lords are notoriously resilient. He must have been shot multiple times though."

Clara blanched and clutched the Doctor's hand even tighter.

"Your situation is not without interest," Jekab said mildly. "With your permission," he turned the scanner on her without waiting and exclaimed, "Great stars! You have a chronolock on you! No heartbeat, the mark of the Raven on you and yet you too are walking around. Incredible!"

Clara barely glanced at him. "Whatever. The question is can you do anything for the Doctor?"

Jekab sighed. "I don't know. I'm out of my depth here."

"But if you do nothing, the Doctor will die?" Clara persisted.

"He's more dead than alive now!" Jekab retorted. However, seeing Clara's angry stare, he hastily added, "Look. All I can do is try. But I'll need equipment. I'll give you a list; can you check and see if you have it on your… Tardis?"

"Why we don't know we take the Doctor back to the Tardis? It might have some ideas," Clara volunteered.

"Your 'ship' has its own ideas? How novel. But no. My equipment is here. Plus it is nightfall outside. There are some predators out there, including some thugs from the nearby village. The Doctor would be much safer here. I will stay with him," Jekab added firmly.

"I'm not leaving the Doctor!" Clara flared.

"Then we can stand here and watch him die together!" Jekab retorted. _Really, this young woman was most maddening._ They had a stare down between them. "Oh, all right," Jekab was irritated. Reaching into a drawer, he produced a silver bracelet. "Here, take this. We can stay in constant contact. If something changes, I can call you back immediately."

Clara looked torn but finally took the list and the bracelet. "I'll be right back," she said with pronounced emphasis on the word back.

As he watched her leave, Jekab looked thoughtful. Glancing down at the silent form of the Doctor, he said softly, "You, my friend, are a very lucky man. To have such a woman of fire and character be totally devoted to you; it is very moving to witness. Perhaps we can help each other, my dying comrade. For I sense your connection to young Clara is probably as profound as hers is to you." He stroked his goatee thoughtfully; this might be a landmark day after all.


	6. Chapter 6

_Hope you all enjoyed the Twelfth Doctor's last adventure, Twice Upon A Time. I really liked a number of things about it, but most of all, there was finally a certain amount of peace in my favorite Doctor's last act. If Peter Capaldi had to leave, this was as graceful an exit as possible. And in my own personal head cannon, the Twelfth Doctor and Clara are together again._

The Doctor opened his eyes. He was in that same black walled room as before but it seemed different now. Claustrophobic. Trapped. He felt awful and the weird patterns on the black material didn't help matters. His head pounded with relentless fury. _When was this going to end – one way or the other?_

Then Jekab hove into his line of sight, looking down at him.

Instantly irritated as he hated people looking down on him and, in general, he didn't like being one of the lying down people anyway, the Doctor mumbled dismissively, "Oh, it's you."

"You certainly are taking a long time to die. Even for a Time Lord," Jekab remarked.

Irritation surged. "Yes, thank you for noticing. I'd actually worked that out some time ago." The Doctor suddenly looked around. "Where's Clara?"

"Fetching me some equipment," Jekab said smugly.

The Doctor lifted an eyebrow. "Clara's not a fetch and carry person."

"She is when your life is on the line," Jekab paused, his face softened. "I do sympathize, you know. It is hard – and painful." He waved that oddly clunky looking device around. "My readings indicate regeneration has already taken place. There is still some residual energy lingering though. Perhaps that is what is, um, animating you?"

The Doctor wearily closed his eyes. "Yes, probably. I suppose." Suddenly he shot up straight. "Hang on, what is that thing anyway?" He pointed to the scanner in Jekab's hand. "Is that a Model 1A of a sonic scanner? " He fished out his own new sonic screwdriver, which suddenly came to life. "Elements of Time Lord DNA?" The Doctor stared at Jekab with challenge written on his face.

Jekab bowed. "My mother. My father was a Malandran."

The Doctor frowned. "Malandran? They haven't been seen for… well, quite a while now." He cleared his throat awkwardly. "Sorry, I'm a bit confused as to where I am on the time line right now."

Jekab cleared his throat. "My people have been gone for at least four hundred years, Doctor. As far as I know, I am the last one although I have been marooned here for so long I do not know for certain."

"Interesting," the Doctor remarked, frowning as Jekab maneuvered him back down to the table. He thought about fighting it but his head was swimming. "Although Malandrans are very long lived people in their own right, I have to ask. Can you regenerate?"

"I did, once. But because of my mixed heritage I probably won't be able to again."

The Doctor checked his own sonic readings. "You're much older than I first thought." Belatedly, he added offhandedly, "No offense."

Frowning, Jekab shot back, "You've very abrupt, you know."

"Ah well," the Doctor managed a shark like grin, "When you're dying there's no time for social niceties."

Jekab looked unimpressed. "Whatever. You are the one of interest here. I've never seen a Time Lord who was still in his old form after a regeneration. Usually the old body burns up in the regeneration fire. It fascinates me. And it is of personal interest to me." The little man's eyes were alight.

The Doctor looked wary. "And why would be you be saying that then?"

Jekab leaned forward intently. "We might be able to help each other, Doctor. I sense your young friend Clara occupies all of your thoughts. You have none for yourself; that is quite clear. Consider this: if you allow me to have your body I may be able to save her and help myself at the same time.

Suddenly uneasy, the Doctor asked, " **After** my death, I hope?"

"Well, yes, you know it won't be long now," Jekab replied matter of fact tone.

"You're a bit abrupt yourself," the Doctor muttered. _It wasn't Jekab's tone; the Doctor understood very well the clinical detachment and he could hardly object when it was applied to him. But Clara, Clara was the important one here and the Doctor would never stop protecting her for as long as he was still able to._

Jekab ignored him. "In return, I will do all in my power to return Clara to her own time. I will also restore her back to health and without the chronolock I have a machine that can store the small amount of regeneration energy you still have. I could use that for myself." The Doctor made no reply and the mysterious little man grew impatient. "Come, come, you know I can't save you. Certainly you must realize that."

The Doctor waved a hand around. "With this stuff, you're going to do all of that? Looks like an intergalactic garage sale in here."

"You are not the only ones to crash here," Jekab replied stiffly. "I've had to build all of my own equipment. But because it comes from so many different cultures, I have a wide range of options, much more than a standard laboratory. Or perhaps a Tardis, I might add."

The Doctor's blue eyes glittered coldly. "There is no way you can lift Clara's chronolock. Believe me; I've had lots of time to look into that matter."

Jekab nodded in acknowledgement. "That is true, I fear. But I would love to put some theories to the test. Who knows what would happen? If we do nothing, that outcome is a certainty. Having a live subject here would make the research go ever so much faster."

"Clara's no subject!" the Doctor ground out. His eyes flashed dangerously. He wished he had the strength to leap off the table and stare down at Jekab in a satisfyingly intimidating fashion. But there were so many things to consider, first and foremost, Clara.

Jekab waved his hand. "Only an expression. But I think I could also use some of your leftover regeneration energy to restore her heart. She could be human again, instead of being suspended in limbo between life and death for years. Just think of what she has endured."

The Doctor felt the sting of that one. He closed his eyes so Jekab couldn't observe their watery condition. "I'll have to speak to Clara first."

"Can't you just tell her what will happen?" Jekab asked, exasperated. "Time is running out on you, may I remind you?"

"No, you may not." The Doctor opened his eyes and the look in them caused Jekab to take a half step back. "If you don't mind, just go get Clara. Now.!

Jekab stepped out of the black room quickly.

 _ **DW DW DW**_

A short time later, when Clara entered the dark room, the Doctor, feeling slightly better, was busily taking off the monitor leads Jekab had attached earlier.

"Stop that!" Clara barked irritably.

The Doctor jumped, clearly caught in the act. He looked like a guilty little boy rather than a two thousand year old Time Lord. "Clara! How nice to see you again," he said with utter insincerity.

Clara dumped the equipment Jekab had requested on a side table. "Jekab tells me you two have concocted some plan together, but he was short on details." Her eyes smoldered in deep anger. "Were you planning on telling me soon?"

"It appears I don't have to," the Doctor replied, sitting down on the table, long legs hanging over the side. "Friend Jekab has been there to take care of everything already, it seems." He paused. "What are you doing with that stuff anyway?"

"Jekab," Clara suddenly flushed, and then finished lamely, "he, uh, wanted it. He has some plan."

The look of hurt and betrayal on the Doctor's face scorched her soul. "Really?"

Desperately, Clara moved closer, anything to wipe that look off his face. "He's going to try and save you, Doctor. He told me so. He's got some ideas." She was distressed and her hands fluttered nervously.

The Doctor said nothing. Finally, when the silence was about to make Clara scream he reached out and took her hands, forcing them to still. "No, Clara, he doesn't. He can't. I've looked over his equipment. There are some things that just can't be done. Or the damage undone. What he wants is to save himself. And, so he says, you."

"No. No, absolutely not!" Clara snapped after the Doctor explained Jekab's proposal. "If you can't come with me, there is no sending me back. I won't go without you, by the way. If you can't make me go, he certainly cannot!"

The Doctor looked deceptively mild. "You need to take me out of the equation. I'm going to be dead," his voice caught briefly, "very soon. I thought maybe we had beaten it but I guess not. It is time for you to take care of yourself. If this can help you, I will do it willingly. Jekab can't deliver on the chronolock; no one can. But if we act soon enough, possibly my regeneration energy can be used to start your heart again. This is one thing I can still do for you and I do it willingly."

Clara's face was mulish; her mouth set in hard lines. "Shut up. If I go back and you're dead, then I'm headed to Trap Street. End of debate."

Anguished, the Doctor said in a choked voice, "Dammit, Clara, I didn't endure all those years in the confession dial so you could go kill yourself! I want you to live!"

Clara blinked, and then threw herself at him with an inarticulate cry. The Doctor caught her in his arms and held her as she sobbed. He lowered his head onto hers and for a while, they simply held each other in the dim room.

Tears made shiny tracks down Clara's cheeks when she looked up at him and once again, the Doctor felt the burning shame of guilt. "Oh, I'd give anything to spare you this."

Rallying, Clara placed a finger on his lips. "No. Don't. No apologies. I wouldn't change a thing. I'd still go with you, every single time."

The Doctor looked startled for a moment; then gave her a soft smile. "Clara, my impossible girl. I think I…"

Shocked, Clara waited with taut nerves. "You think you what?" _Was he actually going to say it?_

He suddenly grinned. "I think I really like you. A whole lot."

Deflated, Clara thumped his arm. "You idiot!" She couldn't help but laugh though.

Gradually they became aware of the fact they were being watched.

"Am I interrupting?" Jekab asked smoothly.

"At first glance, I'd say yes," the Doctor snapped. "We're still talking it over."

"No, we're not." Clara corrected. "Thanks, but no thanks."

Jekab flinched but recovered so quickly it was hard to tell if he'd ever moved at all. "I have a meal prepared, if you feel like eating, Doctor. Perhaps if we all discussed my proposal together?"

He entered the room and he handed a glass of some sort of liquid to the Doctor. "Nothing more than a vitamin mix, sir. You will need what strength you have left for the tests ahead."

Clara started to bristle but the Doctor, after a sharp look and a sniff, shrugged and drank down of the mix. _He was so very tired._

"We're not ungrateful but we really can't help you with these tests," Clara was saying.

Jekab looked disappointed. "My dear young lady, you must realize you will lose your friend anyway. It is only a question of when. What I'm proposing is not murder its-"

"Recycling," the Doctor piped up brightly. "Waste not, want not." His voice was suddenly slurred and he seemed disoriented.

Clara peered at him closely. "Are you all right?"

The glance the Doctor turned on her was pure misery. "No," he said in a broken voice. "I feel terrible, Clara and this fast acting stuff didn't help!" He added in a disappointed, hoarse voice to their host. "I thought you were helping," the Doctor tailed off as he slumped forward.

Clara whirled on Jekab, her arms full of Time Lord. "You gave him something?"

"Of course. A double dose, maximum strength. Knock out a Judoon." Jekab came on the other side and caught the slumping Doctor. After he and Clara lay the unconscious Doctor back down on the table, he took her arm and just stopped short of shaking her. "I doubt that you have ever seen a Time Lord's final death throes, young lady. The last one, the one with no regenerations left. They are horrible. You've already seen one seizure. That is just the start. I gave him a sedative to spare him that agony. I can't believe you are so cruel, so selfish, that you want him to go through that just say you can keep on saying goodbye to him!"

Jekab bustled off to gather supplies. Clara stood in stunned silence. She turned and looked down at the man she loved, now so unnaturally still it was like he was already dead.

There were no more tears left. The only one left, it seemed, was Clara Oswald, standing alone in a netherworld of darkness and death.

 _Thank you for the follows, favorites and reviews._


	7. Chapter 7

Jekab bustled about in his storeroom, flinging things around furiously. _Really, he had never met two more self-centered beings in his long life!_ They took advantage of his help and his shelter but did they think of what the Doctor's regeneration energy would mean to him? No! For Jekab it would be another life span. And perhaps more. If he could find a way to inveigle himself inside that odd looking Tardis (yes, he'd noticed it the first day but had no idea it was an actual Time Lord vessel) use could be made of it as well. He'd never been allowed near a Tardis back in the days of his marriage. Snobby Time Lords! At any rate, it had been too close to the settlement for his comfort earlier but now, things could be very different. If he could get it working, he could at long last be free of this life sucking planet. He could continue his researches again and make public the breakthroughs he'd already discovered. _But no_. The two ingrates dithered while time relentlessly ran out.

The Doctor was worsening by the moment and if Jekab wanted any benefits from his body, he would have to act fast. Clara would, no, **should** , have been more receptive to the generous deal if she had accepted the Doctor's inevitable death but it was clear now she never would. Jekab snorted. The Doctor should have taken a firmer hand in the matter but obviously, he was a weak man when it came to Clara. Speaking of, young Clara was a very beautiful woman but extremely paranoid. It was impossible to get a clandestine start on matters. As it was, he'd only be able to palm an ordinary looking brass key from the Doctor's voluminous pockets – really they went on for forever! He'd been looking for that curious, crude sonic device but Clara had never moved away far enough to him to search anymore.

So Jekab had to move things along quickly or all would be lost. He had secretly dialed up the sedative level even more to flood the Doctor's system, creating a death like state. Hopefully it would push him over the line. Jekab's work could begin before it was too late and if Clara objected too strenuously, he would have to lock her in the storage room until he could deal with her at his leisure. He knew he should have built a security cell years ago but he'd never had a use for a prisoner; only live experimental subjects. But he had to begin. And soon.

 _ **DW DW DW**_

Clara Oswald sat silently in the darkened room, holding on to the Doctor's hand. The room was a steam bath and utterly oppressive. Lying still on the exam table; the Doctor hadn't even twitched in hours, but she knew it couldn't have been that long. Her thoughts were in complete turmoil. Seriously, what would she do if she lost the Doctor again? She had been completely sincere about Trap Street; it had always been her intention to return. But she kept putting it off; hoping against hope to see him once more. Or, if she got word he had regenerated, she would go quietly to Gallifrey and face the Raven once last time. For she, of all people in the universe, knew one face of the Doctor's was anything but a copy of the previous one's personality. They were most certainly NOT interchangeable. But the Doctor's outburst had shaken her resolve. He'd endured over four billion years of hell; she couldn't take a couple of centuries of loneliness? She couldn't just continue on with his work, helping the underdogs, seeing justice done? But really, how long could she go on? Or **should** she go on at all? She had been living on literally borrowed time since their escape from Gallifrey.

The door opened and Jekab wheeled in a cart laden with alien medical instruments and some sort of scanners. He said nothing to her but brusquely moved around her to examine the Doctor. After a bit, he straightened up. "I'm sorry but he's gone," Jekab said softly. "For us to get any use out of the residual energy in his body, we must act now." He hurriedly pushed up the Doctor's shirtsleeve to his bicep.

"What?" Clara never let go of the Doctor's other hand. "What are you doing?"

"The Doctor's last wishes," Jekab replied briskly. "We had discussed this earlier, even before you involved. I promised him I would look out for you. Guide you. Protect you. He wanted you to be free of the chronolock more than anything else. He was thinking of you, Clara. He wanted to talk with you, yes, but the decision had already been made in his mind."

"He had no right to do that!" Clara flared angrily. "We always do everything together. That's how we roll. And when it comes to dying, we'll do that together too!"

Jekab thought about placing a comforting arm around Clara's shoulders but one look at her stormy face precluded that. He forced himself to wait but the panic he felt was rising while this mutinous young woman pouted. _Time was slipping away._

Clara finally sighed; anger drained away. She leaned forward and kissed the Doctor's cheek. Then she turned to Jekab. "What will you need to do?"

Happiness and triumph surged from within but Jekab kept his face sympathetic. Selecting an instrument, he held up a small box. "I need to attach this to his brain. The sooner, the better, in order to collect the energy inside."

Clara started. "His brain?"

Jekab waved his hand as he moved to position the box over the Doctor's forehead. "Only a small incision, right about here," he placed his finger on the front center and drew it across nearly to the temple area.

"That's small?" Clara asked doubtfully. She looked nauseated. "Then what?"

Jekab cleared his throat. "I do not wish to sound indelicate but I could use several of his organs, starting with the brain, of course. But the utmost respect would be observed at all times." He placed a small clear mask over the Doctor's nose and mouth, and connected it to a machine.

"You want to dissect him?" Clara looked ready to burst into tears. "No, no…"

"There, there," Jekab drew closer, this time risking it and placing his arm around her small shoulders. "I'll only take the internal organs. Outwardly, he will remain…. Unchanged. For a while at least, except for the head wound. Unfortunately, in this heat, decay will set in soon.

Clara straightened and rubbed her nose on her sleeve, a rather uncouth gesture that had Jekab withdrawing his arm in disgust. He detested ugly crying. There had been far too much of that from his wife.

Sniffling, Clara stammered. "I need some time alone with him." She hiccupped. "To say a final goodbye."

 _What, again? That's all she had done since their arrival!_ Jekab fought a fierce internal battle but mastered his irritation with a grave, sympathetic manner. _Don't give in to your temper now; you've won_ he privately admonished himself. "Of course you do," he purred. "I remember all too well when first my beloved wife was taken from me, then the faithful Sharona. I have a few more things to retrieve so you can say your farewell. But please, I must stress this. His regeneration energy was low to begin with. The longer we stand here, the less we will reap. For your own sake, Clara, be brief. The life you restart might be your own."

Clara's tear streaked face smiled bravely. In a quavering voice, she said, "Thank you."

Jekab hugged her tightly and then went out into the hallway. Clara went back to holding the Doctor's hand, bending down and talking softly to him.

Dropping the Doctor's hand, Clara went to the door and listened. Hearing nothing, she opened the door and glanced down the hallway. It was empty. Her expression hardened immediately.

Quickly wiping her tears, she shut the door. "Protect me and guide me! You're a bad liar, Jekab." Moving back to the Doctor, she removed the mask and searched his pockets finding his new sonic screwdriver immediately. Thank heavens he still had it! Pointing it at the door, Clara locked it. Then, she turned, located the video monitor and aimed the sonic at it. The picture disappeared.

Then she turned her attention to the silent figure on the table. Smoothing his riotous hair, she leaned down and whispered, "No way am I allowing this creep to dissect you. **No way**!" Noticing the futuristic and painful looking IV in his arm, Clara pulled it out, surprised and dismayed at the size of the hole it had made and the blood that came rushing out. _This was different than the earlier one Jekab had used._ "I'm not giving up, Doctor," she whispered fiercely. "And I won't let you give up either!" Clara angrily threw the IV aside. "Come on, silly old man. You are not dying today. I still think you're in there. Come back to me." Rummaging around in various drawers, she found some material and started some fast bandaging _. Dead men didn't bleed that much._

 _ **DW DW DW**_

Jekab kept thinking about one more thing he could use – really, he was quite giddy about the thought of harvesting a mighty Time Lord's body, the thought was so delicious. He had no love for the Time Lords; not being a purebred was something he'd been scorned for his entire childhood. Especially for having the cheek to marry the mighty Omega's niece. Time for some long overdue payback. He'd seen some of that Time Lord arrogance in the Doctor as well. Not the class bias, but that supreme arrogant confidence, even while he was dying he thought himself smarter than Jekab. _We'll see about that._

IF all worked out, he would use the Doctor's residual energy to try and gain another regeneration for himself first. Clara was time locked and couldn't die if she wanted to. She would keep for later. Perhaps some time away from the Doctor's evil influence would calm her down, make her more amenable. However, right now it was the Doctor's precious life source that was the most important and it was flickering like a candle nearly burnt out. If Jekab had cut short the flickering by a bit, all the better. _More charitable really. Easier on the Doctor than all that suffering, easier on Clara not to see it._ All in all he was doing them both a favor.

Jekab had to admit he admired Clara's spunkiness – and her utter devotion to the Doctor. She was a rare beauty, to be sure. Nearly as much as Sharona had been. But she had a big mouth on her and a disturbing tendency to think far too much of herself, all based in hysterical emotion of course. Such females were very high maintenance and troublesome. He would put her aside somewhere; perhaps in that unfinished cryogenic chamber he had been building for so long. Clara wouldn't need to know it wasn't functional but a couple of day long sessions in that might tone her defiance down a bit. Jekab knew Clara was untrustworthy and he glanced up at the monitor in the humid storeroom. The picture was dim – again – really, this planet just had to destroy everything, didn't it? He moved closer and wiped the screen with a rag.

That's when he discovered there was no picture from the exam room.

"That interfering little minx!" Jekab seethed. He left at a run.

 _ **DW DW DW**_

Someone kept hitting his face.

It had been going on for some time now but he had hardly noticed until now. But a well-loved voice coming from the next galaxy it seemed insisted that he wake up **right now**.

The voice sounded very frantic and that worried him. Something was going on. Even though the Doctor wanted nothing more than to sleep and let the pain go eat away at someone else for a while, Clara sounded panicky and that would never do. He opened his eyes.

"Oh, thank God," Clara Oswald's knees nearly buckled.

Memory flooded in and he risked a quick glance down his body.

"It's okay; you haven't changed," Clara said quickly, literally pulling him upright.

The Doctor's head swam and his mouth was as dry as the sounds of Gallifrey. He tried to speak but only a couple of croaking sounds came out.

"Oh, and by the way," Clara used one arm to brace his back but the other hand came up so menacingly the Doctor automatically flinched, "don't you dare tell Jekab you'll sacrifice yourself for me in some private agreement. Never, ever, do that again! Lucky for you I realized he lied about the other stuff in time." She held a metal cup of warm water to his lips that she snatched from a nearby console.

Thankfully, she didn't slap him as he drank. The Doctor's muddled mind and bleary eyes tried to sort out everything. Finally, he managed a, "No."

Clara was maneuvering his feet on the floor when she looked up. "Sorry?"

The Doctor looked her in the eyes, for once being nearly on the same level. "No, I didn't."

"You mean Jekab?" Clara frowned.

"No. Yes. I mean, I didn't tell him it was all right, Clara. Never agreed. Had to talk to you first." Doing a quick mental inventory, the Doctor realized his system was flooded with a powerful sedative. No wonder he felt so…. Thick? He then divided his concentration between expelling the effects and listening to Clara.

Clara snaked an arm along his shoulders, her face intense. "Well, you're learning at any rate. But now we have to go." She pulled him upright, waited for his dizziness to pass and then headed for the door.

The door opened and there stood Jekab, holding a very nasty blaster, his evidently newly repaired Mondasian Cyberman by his side. He also held up a Tardis key. "Going somewhere?"


	8. Chapter 8

_Thank you for the follows and favorites. Special thanks to those of you who left kind reviews. They are appreciated._

"Ah. Been rifling my pockets too, hey?" The Doctor leveled a hard stare at Jekab. "Well, we've been chatting, you might say, and we wondered why you gave me such a massive overdose of lexarium? Why, it was almost like you wanted me to die a bit faster so you could get on with your work, right?"

"I admit I am surprised to see you up and about. I thought lexarium was one of the few drugs a Time Lord could not banish from his system. It is getting annoying, this almost dead habit of yours. How many times do you plan on resurrection?" Jekab complained.

"I've no idea," the Doctor admitted heavily. Abruptly, he quickly moved on. "But I am disappointed in you, Jekab. You've drugged me and you want to vampire off my body but you crossed the line when you lied to Clara. That is just too much. Telling her I agreed to all of this."

"Why are you fighting me?" Jekab shouted desperately. "You're going to die anyway; why not die in the cause of science?"

"Yeah," Clara piped up bitterly, "the science of helping Jekab live forever!" Her eyes flashed angrily.

Jekab looked wounded. "I am not turning my back on you, dear Clara. I made an oath to the Doctor that I would dedicate all my resources to lifting the chronolock and restoring your humanity. I will also give you a place to call your home."

The Doctor rolled his eyes when he heard that and Clara's face hardened. "And I will get your companionship too, I'll bet?"

Jekab looked gloomy. "In a long lifetime, you'll find that is the most precious."

Clara glanced up at the Doctor, who looked uncomfortable. "Yeah, we already know that. You're a bit late with that information – for both of us."

"And what about her Tardis?" the Doctor asked casually, sitting on the table he had been lying on earlier.

Jekab started. " **Her** Tardis?"

The Doctor nodded while Clara added brightly, "Yeah, he stole it for me." She looked utterly pleased and nauseatingly perky.

Anger suffused Jekab's face. "Then the Tardis key I found in your pocket doesn't work in that contraption by the primitives' settlement?" He asked irately.

"Er, no," The Doctor looked strained. "My Tardis is… someplace else."

Jekab looked ready to burst. "I will remind you both that I tried to be civilized about this," he said angrily. "We could have all helped each other. But now-"

He gave a quick nod at the silent Cyberman; it bent over, touched the chest unit and opened fire from his head apparatus.

The Doctor shoved Clara off to one side while he dove down on the floor on the other. Clara ducked behind some metal boxes, picked up some loose items lying around and threw it at the Cyberman. One, a scalpel, hit its face and she was sickened to see blood blossom on the face cloth. It howled in an eerie mechanical sound but, ignoring her, the Cyberman kept on firing at the Doctor, hitting a computer console which burst into sparks and flame. Jekab yelled something as the Doctor tried to get out of the line of fire. But there was no cover and nowhere to go in the small room and Jekab cut the Doctor down himself with a burst of fire from his blaster.

The Doctor collapsed but Jekab noted it took a sustained half power burst to do it, which was disquieting. _He cannot be gaining strength!_ Clara seeing her friend fall, face twisted with hate, came running toward Jekab with a scream of pure rage, hands extended for his face. As he was only a couple of inches taller than she was, there was no time for fair play, so he settled for a quick burst from the blaster. The young human finally went down after a second blast.

Jekab shook his head. "Well, you were worse than useless," he snapped at the silent Cyberman. "Those idiots! And now you have destroyed the energy regulator monitor. Good shooting!" _Waste. He abhorred waste. Stupid Cyberman; maybe the Doctor was right about them. He should probably deactivate this last one before it destroyed anything else in its ineptitude._ He looked at the two bodies on the floor with great distaste. _Even more waste. And these two had forced him into it._

 _ **DW DW DW**_

When the Doctor next awoke he was back in that claustrophobic black walled room and strapped down again on the same stupid table. This time however, there was a tight band around his forehead. His wrists were clamped down by wide bands of steel as were his ankles. "I'm really getting tired of this," he muttered.

To his irritation, Jekab's voice floated out from behind him where he was unable to turn and see. "Well, it is really remarkable –and utterly annoying - how you insist on coming back to some sort of life! Why aren't you dead?" He came into the light carrying a tray with medical instruments, several scalpels chief among them, along with a small rectangle box that lay in a surgically prepped tray with some other items.

"People have thought that before," the Doctor said quietly. "Yet, here I still am. Not dead."

"Not alive either," Jekab countered with a distracted air, his hands full of wires and monitor leads.

Actually, except for the achiness of being shot – again - and being strapped down – again - on this bloody table, the Doctor was feeling a bit better than before. Odd that, considering he spent most of his time on this side of the planet in this room, on this table. "What did you do with Clara?"

Jekab chuckled. "What, no threats? No vows of vengeance? I'm disappointed."

The Doctor scowled. "Well, I'm not really able to do much right now, so it would be pointless to waste my flagging, dying energy. You would feel short changed if I used it for my own purposes."

Attaching some wires to the box, Jekab nodded approvingly. "Eminently well thought out." He tinkered happily. "I'll make a test before making the deep incision on you," he chattered, almost humming with happiness.

"So where is she?" The Doctor's voice was level but worry was beginning to take hold. A threat to Clara galvanized him more than all the threats in the galaxy directed at him.

"My associate, the mostly metal one that causes you such angst, is with her in the storage cupboard. She attacked me and I was forced to use a heavy stun on her. To be honest, I was disappointed at her lack of control." He held the box up to the Doctor's forehead and did some measuring.

"You do know there is no way you can siphon off regeneration energy and store it like acorns for the winter. And you can't cut it out of me!" The Doctor hissed as Jekab stabbed him hard with a needle.

"Oh, but I have stored regeneration energy before, Doctor. See that bank of computers over there? The one with the black box area? That has been holding the regeneration energy of a Time Lady for three centuries. Only problem is time has leached far too much of it away. For a long time I wasn't ready to experiment with the remainder yet but I am now. Hopefully you still have enough energy left to boost the signal, so to speak." He took off Clara's improvised bandage and jabbed another large needle into the Doctor's arm. "I'm theorizing your blood may have some trace element that will either help sustain me for a while or assist in my research. Either way, I will find every use I can for your body, Doctor. I'm not wasting one iota of it."

The Doctor looked bitter. "Somehow I'm not comforted by that. The Malandrans were a very long lived race on their own strengths. Plus, you've already regenerated once. I can tell you from firsthand experience that having an immortal's life span has distinct disadvantages. But, more importantly, whose regeneration energy is in that box, Jekab? Was Sharona a Time Lady too?"

"My wife. She had regenerations to spare; she, typically I might add, refused to share them. Even with me. I was dying of Begrosian plague as well. I begged her to lend me a regeneration; she would not. She had at least six to go but no, it was all about her. I know it can be done, at least long ago some of the high born Time Lords I knew used some ancient piece of equipment from bygone times to give a regeneration to a loved one. But the technology was lost some centuries afterward. I was attempting to replicate it when I contracted the disease. Instead, I regenerated other than die of the plague. Used up my one life. But my wife did not. Chose not to go on. She died with regenerations left. My machine was still primitive and I lost more than I wished to of the regeneration energy to the atmosphere but the concept was born. It did store some of the energy and has held it for all these years. I've been refining the technique since I've been marooned in this awful place." Jekab stared intently at the Doctor. "You arrive, a regenerated Time Lord mysteriously still in his old body – which is a new one on me, by the way - and bringing a young human woman with you, neither alive nor dead. Any serious researcher would jump at this remarkable chance. You **must** see that!"

"I can't see much of anything right now!" The Doctor complained as Jekab attached the box to the band around his forehead. "You remind me of a Time Lady I knew years ago. Name of the Rani. You two would get on famously."

Jekab leaned down, a sad look on his face as he smoothed the Doctor's hair back.

"Stop that or this won't go well at all," the Doctor hissed angrily. He tried to twist away but was stopped by the band around his head.

"Only a sign of comfort," Jekab said smoothly. "And I don't need your hair in the incision I will be making. And it is all over the place by the way." Jekab loomed over him. "I'm no murderer, Doctor, only taking the little life that is left to you. And I have given my word I will care for Clara. She is a lovely, spirited woman. I don't think you realize what loneliness can do to a man after a time," he added sadly.

The Doctor gave him a piercing bitter stare. "Oh, I have some idea," he said icily.

His tone made Jekab pause. "Yes, yes, I suppose you might," he said slowly. "Well, anyway," he tried to recover his excitement, "I'm ready to begin." He then turned on the large, odd looking machine.

Eyes watering, the Doctor gasped for air in the hot, muggy room as the electrical current surged through him. It burned through his veins, hot and painful. He tried to speak but his throat was constricting and the words died stillborn.

Suddenly however, there was a tremendous crash and noise nearby.

They heard a clanging uproar, a mechanical voice yelling and a human voice screaming. The floor shook; either an earthquake or heavy items falling from the overhead storage bins, Jekab thought. He reluctantly dialed the machine back down. "Is that Clara?" He asked in uncertainty.

If not strapped in place, the Doctor would have slumped in relief. "Who else?" He said a hoarse voice. "Wait until you take her somewhere and there are lots of running involved; or a pudding brain with a pet Cyberman hanging about talking nonsense. This is a mild outburst for her," he added, gasping for breath.

The unholy racket continued. Jekab attempted to refocus his energies on his own project, namely the Doctor. "Well, she can't hurt much in the storeroom, only herself.

He suddenly became aware of the Doctor's steely gaze upon him. "Great stars of Klaatu! You don't mean-"

The Doctor tried to shrug but was too limited in mobility. "I do mean. Clara can be… unstable at times." His expression was unreadable.

 _Another delay!_ Jekab vacillated; surely the woman would not be mad enough to destroy all of his hard earned supplies. They were all nicely packed away in storage but if one became unbalanced there could be some deadly chemical reactions. "Don't go away!" He paused briefly for a quick acknowledgement of his witticism. The Doctor merely stared back with a cryptic look on his face. Then, there was another tremendous crash nearby and Jekab gave in and dashed off.

The Doctor grinned; the mental picture of Jekab dealing with an enraged Clara Oswald was an amusing one. But the real work had to be done now. "Come on, dear old dead Doctor," he muttered to himself. "Perhaps you've become a better telepath in your extended twilight years."

Frowning, the Doctor tried to clear his mind. It took a prodigious effort. Bill, Missy, Nardole, the colony ship, the Master, and Mondasian Cybermen, the First Doctor, Bill again, this time bringing back his fondest memories, that British Captain who had turned out to be someone very important, the wistful and unexpected reunion with Clara on this bizarre world and now Jekab. They all ran together in his mind like a raging mountain river. He had been running and fighting for so long now. An ocean of fatigue and disillusionment washed over him and his concentration broke.

 _He was so tired._ Maybe he should finish the job this time. Just get on with it and let the next Doctor move on wherever they were. Clara wouldn't be alone for long-

 **Clara.**

 _ **No!**_ He would never leave Clara again, hybrid or no hybrid theory. He could see her face plainly in front of him, in all of its many facets; laughing, crying, angry, mysterious, lecturing and yes, loving. That last bit it had taken him so long to believe he regretted all over again the time he wasted thinking she preferred somebody else. Regretted he ever fell for that stupid hybrid business in the first place. He and Clara should have stayed in what would turn out to be her Tardis and just kept running. But here he was again, with another second chance, however tenuous it may be. He heard Clara's voice in his head. _Go for it._

He wasn't sure if this would work but it did with Bill so he tried to send Clara a quick message:

 **KEEP HIM THERE**.

Squeezing his eyes shut, the Doctor cleared out all the negative emotion, all the pain, all the weariness. Just him and the bolt that clamped the metal sleeve down tight on his right arm. The left of course had the same setup but hey, one thing at a time.

 _Come on, concentrate_. He could do it. It had worked on wood in the confession dial, it would work here. _It had to._

For an agonizingly long time, the Doctor focused. Sweat rolled down his face and his hair grew damp with it. Images of the ghastly castle in the confession dial, the Veil, the soul consuming worry about Clara, it all lurked in the background but he resolutely tried to sweep it aside.

There was nothing in this universe except his mind and a bolt holding his hand trapped.

The Doctor kept pushing but nothing happened. Panic beat at the edges of his mind; this was taking far too long! But he pushed that back as well and kept to his task.

 _Give it up, you can't do this. You always were a rubbish telepath,_ a voice that sounded like Missy's hovered in his subconscious. The thing is, with that one, you never knew what she really meant.

 _You never were any good at this, like everything else you've done, you'll fail and they'll all die,"_ said the sneering Master.

 _You'll save her, Doctor. You can do it, I just know it!_ Bill with her wide smile and her eternal faith in him.

 _Sir, you may be taking on far too much in your condition,_ Nardole fretted.

"Go away," the Doctor muttered out loud. _Leave it to Nardole to be the voice of reason._

 _ **I'm waiting**_ said Clara, her face framed in light, much like she was on that World War I battlefield.

Exhausted, he kept on trying.

When the bolt finally gave, it pushed up and out with such force it imbedded itself in the ceiling above him. Spent, the Doctor didn't move. Then he looked down, worked until his hand was free.

Only then did he laugh. Maniacally.

 _It seemed so long since he'd won anything._ The sheer emotional power of his triumph popped the left bolt almost immediately.


	9. Chapter 9

When Clara awoke, she had a splitting headache. Finding herself in some jumbled storeroom, she had painfully levered herself off the floor, trying to take stock. Only then she saw that weird looking Cyberman standing in front of the door, obviously being a guard.

"Let me pass," Clara ordered. Instead of fear, she felt only rage. That creepy thing had shot the Doctor twice on this planet alone. Its metal brotherhood had evidently been responsible for his death earlier in the other universe. That was reason enough to wish it dead. She really didn't feel bad for bloodying its face earlier after all.

"You will remain here," the Cyberman said in that creepy sing song voice.

"If you insist," Clara said coolly. Going over to a stack of packing crates, she deliberately pushed all of them over.

They missed the Cyberman but a couple broke open very satisfyingly. A quick scan revealed nothing of any ready use, so Clara threw down some more on the floor, and then pushed over another stack that thundered to the ground.

"Let me out!" She screamed, continuing to throw things and destroy everything in her path. After all that had happened to her, it felt good to take it out on Jekab's plunder. Forget the control; it was past time to rage at the universe.

"You must cease this at once!" The Cyberman, obviously not programmed on what to do in the face of irrational defiance, stomped around behind her in a futile attempt to catch the smaller items she threw. "This destruction must stop now!"

"Make me!" Clara dared. Suddenly everything had caught up with her and her frustration erupted like a volcano. Jekab, Time Lords, chronolocks, the Doctor's health, all of it lit a fuse on her anger. Picking up a clunky unknown piece of equipment, she hurled it at the Cyberman who, of course, didn't bother to move out of the way. She scored another direct hit on the face. It made a sickening thud against the cloth covered face and the Cyberman slumped, blood blossoming across the entire face this time. For a moment, Clara felt sick. It had once been a person. _Like Danny._

 _ **DW DW DW**_

Jekab tried to calm himself down as he ran to the store room. After all, Clara was but a human child, really, although he had to admit he was disappointed in her actions. She would certainly be a challenge, to be sure.

Not for the first time he wondered exactly what the relationship was between the Doctor and Clara. But suddenly a loud crash against the door reminded him of his mission.

Unlocking the door, Jekab cautiously announced himself. "Clara! You must stop this at once. At once I say!" Not wanting to get hit, he only peeked around the partially opened door.

"Come on in, you idiot!" Clara screeched in a most unladylike manner. She lobbed another good sized piece of something at the door and it smacked against the door frame, uncomfortably close to his head.

Jekab risked a quick look and then stopped. The crash was evidently his Cyberman, who lay on the floor, twitching and making the most hideous noises in that weird mechanic voice. Then, it grew silent and didn't move again. His precious storeroom, filled with all the treasures, junk and anything else he could scavenge over the years, lay strewn all over the floor. A good part of it was broken or ruined. "You fool! You ignorant savage! You have destroyed my precious supplies!"

Clara Oswald, with a malicious smile on her face, stood on two of his master computer control boards, one foot raised, ready to finish the job. In her hand she held a brilliant silver and red necklace. "Just an FYI in the future; you might not want to imprison somebody in a storeroom unless you don't mind losing stuff." Clara's eyes glittered but then something curious happened and her face went blank momentarily; her thoughts it seemed, were suddenly elsewhere.

 **KEEP HIM THERE.**

She smiled; this time one of pure radiant joy. Moving over to a vertical storage locker she's pushed over earlier, she retrieved a strange looking instrument. "What's this? A space guitar?" Clara held the necklace in one hand and the odd looking guitar in another.

Jekab was enraged. "You will give these items to me right now!"

Clara danced out of harm's way. "Or what? You'll do what?"

"I will finish killing the Doctor and then I will kill you as well, you barbarian!" Jekab raised the pistol he had brought in.

Clara suddenly calmed down and the chaos was turned off like a light switch. "Is this your wife's? " She asked quietly.

Jekab's aim never wavered. "Yes. The necklace was. The guitar is Sharona's. If you touch either one of them, I shall kill you. That is a promise." The coldness in his voice left no doubt he meant it.

Clara did put the guitar down but retained the necklace. "Did you even love your wife?"

"No," Jekab snarled. "If you must know, I killed her. It was a mercy killing; the plague would have taken her anyway. As I told the Doctor, she refused to share her regenerations with me and therein lies a lesson for you, my dear Clara. No Time Lord ever loves anyone but another Time Lord. When the Doctor sends you away, you'll find that out the hard way one day."

"Oh, he's already done that," Clara scoffed. "We're way past that now. And, for the record, I'd already heard the 'we're all puppies to them' speech as well."

Jekab smoldered, uninterested in witty remarks. He looked at the wreckage of his hard won treasure so painstakingly gathered from being marooned here for so long. "You fool." He gestured with the gun, his eyes icy with hate. "Now, let's go see your precious Doctor. You can see him die; that will be my 'gift' to you!"

 _ **DW DW DW**_

"All right, Doctor, your young friend wants to see you die before she follows. So, let's-" Jekab broke off when he realized the exam table was empty.

Clara suddenly jumped to the left and a hand chopped down on Jekab's right arm, causing him to drop the gun which Clara scooped up immediately.

The Doctor stood in a stylish aikido pose, looking smug. "See? Still not dead."

Clara laughed joyously and moved closer. "You are enjoying this way too much. You never told me you could do tae kwan do."

"Venusian aikido," the Doctor corrected. "I used to use it a lot but one gets lazy with the sonic screwdriver around all the time."

"In Orion's name, why don't you die?" Jekab roared. All traces of the civilized man were gone now and he stood in a dangerous, sullen state.

Clara glared daggers at him but the Doctor looked thoughtful. "I think I've already done that. Clara here thinks my Tardis sent me to her. I said, no, that's too fanciful but-"

"I know she did," Clara put in smugly.

"She's the boss," the Doctor shrugged, and then continued. "At any rate, I'm here now and I've had plenty of time to decide I do want to live. So you can't use my body for this!" He moved to large box covered by a tarp and pulled off the cover with a flourish.

In a clear coffin sized life support escape pod, the body of a beautiful young woman lay. Small flickering golden flecks dotted the area around her.

"And this, I take it, is?" the Doctor asked.

"Sharona," Clara finished. "She was the love of his life. Other than himself, that is." She pointed the blaster at Jekab with relish.

The Doctor looked impatient. "It seems to me the story changes every hour with you. So which is it? Trying to extend your life or reanimating her?" he asked irritably.

Jekab seemed unable to take his eyes off the body. "Sharona loved me with a love that was true and pure. She didn't care about my heritage. Or the fact that the Time Lords, led by my wife's family, ignored me and belittled my work. But, unbeknownst to me, she had already contracted Begrosian plague before we left. I wanted to try and use my wife's collected regeneration energy to save her but she refused. I tried it anyway but it was too late; the disease was too far progressed. So I lost her as well. Her body however, I have kept safe, ready for the right catalyst to come along and make her live again. I persevered despite it all, and I existed here, collecting knowledge until two self-absorbed fools fell into my life and now have destroyed all that I had gathered."

"Who exactly was your wife again?" the Doctor asked quietly.

"Portia."

"Portia?" The Doctor looked shocked. "You mean the niece of Omega?"

"Yes." Jekab lip curled.

"That's some rarified Time Lord society, Jekab. And Omega was always full of himself," the Doctor observed.

"I suppose you're going to tell me you knew him," Jekab said tartly.

Shrugging, the Doctor replied, "Several of my life times ago. It took three of me to bring him down and he was only a shadow of himself then," he finished with smug satisfaction.

Jekab stared for a moment, but decided not to pursue it. "He was the one who wrecked our marriage. He turned her against me. One night, after a bitter fight, she attacked me. I pushed her aside, intending to go out for the night. But she fell awkwardly and hit her head. She only woke up a couple of times after that. Enough to refuse me." He added bitterly.

"All the while you were consoling yourself with Sharona?" Clara said acidly.

"Still not clear on for who you were saving the energy for? Sharona or yourself?" The Doctor asked.

Jekab turned a crazed look on his face. "And now you'll never find out!" He shoved Clara into the Doctor, and ran behind the control console, twisting dials and tapping screens. "At least you can't go on either, Doctor! Nor will Clara!" Finally, he snatched up a mallet and began pounding on the console and everything else within reach. Sparks flew and the whine of an overload pierced the air.

Bending down, Jekab came back up with another pistol, one of Sontaran origin this time. He started firing randomly in their direction.

The Doctor was helping Clara to her feet and then both were turning to run for cover. "Jekab, stop!" The Doctor yelled, pushing Clara behind some crates. "We might be able to help each other yet – just not in the way you had intended!"

Jekab threw the mallet he had in his other hand at the Doctor, who ducked easily out of the way. "I wasn't being unreasonable! I would have taken care of Clara! I would have treated your body with respect! But no, just like all Time Lords, you think only of yourself. Well, now see what I think of you!" He pounded the console, slapping monitors and pushing buttons. "I did make this room utterly secure you know!"

The hum of an electrified force field came on and Clara, huddled near the wall, yelped as her hand brushed against it.

The Doctor stood tall and unmoving. "Jekab, listen to me. I know exactly what you are feeling – what you have felt – all these years. I had a very long time to think about the way I lost Clara. In fact, it was the Time Lords who caused her death, setting a trap for me and she got caught in it. So, after a really long exile, I came back, broke the laws of time and saved her a moment before her death. That is why she is time locked."

Jekab ceased his barrage to listen. "So, you are no better than I am! Only, still being a self-centered Time Lord, you deny any chance of my happiness!"

The Doctor, hand motioning behind him to Clara to stay down, spoke quietly. "I can't help you, not the way you want me to. It simply won't work. But if we work together, we might be able to work out something." He paused, and then added wearily, "It would be better than killing each other, I can tell you that."

The whine of the power load suddenly amped up the volume and it became painful to everyone's ears. A crackling sound, almost like crinkly, wadded up paper filled the small room. All eyes were drawn to the glass container that contained Sharona's body. A spider web of cracks expanded across the face of it and then it cracked open. The air rushing in caused the body inside to decompose immediately.

Jekab howled in anguish. "You did this! Both of you are the utter annihilation and ruin of me!" He opened fire once again, this time catching the Doctor a glancing blow off of his shoulder. He rapidly dove to the floor behind the sparse cover of packing crates.

Behind him, Clara came up firing as well, peppering the area around Jekab with blasts.

Jekab, with a final malicious grin, fired directly into the generator and the entire console exploded. The blast threw Clara into the wall where she got a brief jolt before the power shorted out and she literally bounced back into the rising Doctor's arms. He fell to the floor again, covering her body with his from the debris shower. Then, a very fine golden mist fell all around them. When the Doctor noticed it, he shifted Clara enough that the mist fell on her and, pulling her hair back away from her neck, it landed directly on the chronolock. _Maybe it would be enough?_ More debris then crashed down on him and he desperately tried to protect Clara as a choking dust cloud arose.

 _ **DW DW DW**_

Drenched in sweat, the Doctor worked as quickly as he could. First he had collected the unconscious Clara, who had blood streaming down the side of her face, from the shattered control room and carried her back to the Tardis. His shoulder ached abominably but he ignored it. _Once again,_ _time was of the essence._

Quickly ascertaining her condition wasn't life threatening, the Doctor jury rigged a monitoring system to alert him if her situation changed. But for now, he had work to do and he had to do it quickly.

As he worked in the humid conditions, the Doctor could feel his vitality ebbing away again; the heat didn't help of course, but that wasn't his only enemy. This planet was toxic to him and even if he didn't make it away from here, the Doctor was determined Clara would. His Impossible Girl would be free to roam the stars again, no matter what it cost him. It wasn't his best choice but it might be his only choice.

Back in the control room, it didn't take any time to realize what was left of Jekab was dead. The Doctor almost felt a flicker a pity for the man but it was tempered by what he'd tried to do to them. Especially to Clara.

 ** _Time to move on._**

 _ **DW DW DW**_

She was a little on the over warm side but it was comfortable where she rested and Clara rolled over in complete ease. Flinging a hand out, she immediately knocked over some weirdly cobbled together contraption that seem to involve an old alarm clock and a battery powered motion sensor, which clattered to the floor. She had no idea what it was and why this, this thing, was attached to her wrist. Touching a hand to her head, Clara felt a big bandage there. Well, that explained the residual dull throb then. She was back in the bedroom in her Tardis and Clara smiled when she saw the pitcher of water, a glass, some energy bars, a plate of biscuits and a huge box of tissues crowded on the nightstand. _The Doctor and his duty of care overkill again._

 _The Doctor!_

She bolted upright and swung her legs out of bed. There was a sharp pain on the side of her head and her skin tingled with electricity but she paused a moment and it all eased a bit. She still wore the clothes she had on earlier, dirty, sweat stained and smoky. _Going to have a word with the Doctor about placing people in clean beds with dirty clothes on._

Wobbling out to the console room, Clara saw its pristine white décor was now marred by that loathsome black spongy material that had covered the walls at Jekab's control room. Frowning, she heard a noise outside and here came the Doctor, struggling with another improvised cartload of the black stuff.

"What the hell have you done to my Tardis?" Clara demanded.

The Doctor jumped. "Clara! You're awake!" He frowned. "Why didn't my alarm system alert me?"

Smiling (she loved to see him jump), Clara replied sweetly, "I might have, you know, knocked it over."

Irritated, the Doctor grumbled, "Oh, fine. Clara's magic touch."

Belatedly, Clara took in his appearance. Pale as the torn white shirt he wore, one shoulder charred from blaster fire and hair plastered down with sweat and dirt, he looked awful. The Doctor leaned over his cart, gasping over breath.

Clara stepped forward, "Are you okay?"

"Fine," the Doctor managed. "You?"

"Fine," Clara replied automatically.

The Doctor gave her a sharp look and she returned with a guileless smile. "What are you doing?" Clara inquired.

"Trying to make sure you-" the Doctor stopped when he noticed Clara's suddenly stormy expression, "make sure **we** have a way off this planet. Time is short, so go rest. Off you pop."

Irritated at the dismissal, (he knew better than that!) Clara moved to help unload the stuff. "Why the rush?"

"Clara, I don't have time to chat. We'll talk later," the Doctor retorted. He stumbled however, when trying to move a large segment of the wall and Clara caught the other end to assist him.

"Yeah, well, we never talk later so we'll talk now while we work, right?" The Doctor started to protest so she held up one finger in her best 'quiet now' teacher manner. He subsided with a sulky look.

While Clara unloaded the cart, she asked, "What is this planet doing to you? That's the problem, isn't it? Is it keeping you alive or is it killing you?"

The Doctor was forced to lean on the console for a moment to catch his breath. He looked washed out. "I don't know. But I refuse to spend what's left of this life in the remnants of Jekab's control room. That black room was the only place I've ever felt semi decent since we crashed here for any amount of time. Also, his equipment worked. He had power. It seems to have an absorbent quality that soaks up the magnetic fields around here, preventing the power drain of energy sources. So, I'm putting what's left of it around the power console of the Tardis. He looked haunted. "It's all I have left, Clara. I can't think of anything else to do."

Clara smiled; affection for her space husband (wouldn't he hate that name!) overflowing. "Okay. You stay here while I get the black lagoon stuff. You install."

So, Clara went out into the humid muck and hauled black wall junk back to the Tardis while the Doctor labored to place it around the console room. She had once dared to glance in Jekab's direction but the Doctor had covered him with a tarp and Clara was content that it remain that way.

When they were finally finished, Clara's head was pounding like hammers on an anvil. She was sweaty, dirty and exhausted. The Doctor wasn't any better; barely standing, hunched over the Tardis console, watching the readings. Clara shuddered; if he had been outside, he would have been passed out or dead by now.

Nodding at the console, the Doctor's blue eyes met her brown ones. "Now or never, I think," he said quietly. "Power levels are up; we'll make orbit but whether we'll get out of here is anybody's guess."

Clara twisted her hands nervously. "Where should we go?" Seeing the Doctor's familiar irritated look, she giggled, a bit hysterical. "Okay, dumb question." She nodded at the lever.

The Doctor gave her a sad smile. "Your Tardis."

Knowing what he was thinking, Clara bristled. "You are NOT dying today, Doctor. Not on my watch. I've got a duty of care too." She looked at the lever. "We'll do it together."

His hand on top of hers, they pulled the lever down and the console lit up, moving up and down. The familiar noises were back and never sounded more beautiful to them both. Clara watched the Doctor's face as they looked at the planet falling away behind them. The Tardis never faltered and they left orbit safely this time.

The Doctor sagged for a moment. "Yay, Team Not Dead."

Clara huffed a short laugh. "Score a win for Team Not Giving Up either."

They were too exhausted to celebrate much. Clara moved into the Doctor's arms and buried her head in his chest arms around his waist. His arms went around her and he carefully watched the console readings with weary relief.

What Clara heard made her look up in surprise. "You've got one heart beat back!" She moved to the other side. "Only one though."

Looking down at her, the Doctor gave her a tired smile. "So do you."

"Oh my God!" Clara had been vaguely aware of some noise in the background but it had been so long, she'd never ever dreamed it was her heart once again beating. She had been so intent on hauling the black material back to the Tardis, she hadn't even noticed the strenuous effort of breathing in the high humidity.

The Doctor gently turned her around by the shoulders and lifted her hair off the back of her neck. "Clara," he said in a choked voice, "it's gone. The chronolock is gone." The relief he felt almost made his knees buckle.

For one of the few times in her life, Clara Oswald was speechless. Her mouth moved but no sound came out. She clutched the Doctor closer and was overjoyed when he did the same to her.


	10. Chapter 10

_Thank you for sticking around for the final chapter. Hope you enjoy it. Many thanks for the reviews and favorites._

The Doctor sat stretched out on a couch before a small artificial fire in the fireplace of the new library. Finally, safely away from the planet's gravity and at the far edge of the hold of the magnetic fields, he had been able to step away from the console with some peace of mind.

The Doc Martens lay off to the side; he had just taken a long shower and his hair was still in the fluffy just washed stage. The Tardis had finally taken to manufacturing some clothes for him and he wore some plaid flannel trousers with a soft, collarless black flannel shirt. In a word, he was relaxed, more than he'd been in a very long time.

The Doctor had started reconfiguring rooms in Clara's Tardis a couple of days ago. Clara was undecided yet as to whether she would keep the diner motif so he had done nothing about that. The Doctor himself had communicated directly with her Tardis, who indicated either way was fine. But he had to remind himself several times this was not his Tardis and there were definite boundaries.

Thinking about this Tardis brought up painfully sharp memories of his own. He wondered if she was all right. Did she like the new Doctor? Better than him? Did the Tardis really send him as he was dying to Clara? His brain scoffed but his heart was beginning to believe. Clara had absolutely no doubts; she had made that crystal clear. He could not bring himself to wonder what the next Doctor was doing now though; it was too painful. _Good luck in changing the police box exterior,_ he thought with bitter amusement. Losing his Tardis was like a major part of him had been cut away and the painful wound still bled.

However, he was back with his Impossible Girl again. Life was indeed a perpetual trade off, it seemed.

Right on cue, a smiling Clara, wearing a soft pink robe and fluffy slippers, entered the room bearing a tray with two mugs of steaming cocoa, some cookies and, of all things, a tiny plastic Christmas tree.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows.

"I figured it out; I think it's only a few weeks or so after Christmas back on earth. We never got to celebrate so I thought we would tonight. Now, scoot over," she ordered briskly.

With a put upon sigh, the Doctor sat up and wearily rubbed his face. "I'm against Christmas carols," he protested automatically.

"Shut up," Clara said benignly and set the tray down on the small table in front of the couch. "I love how the Tardis is working again. Food magically appears." She sat down beside him and put her arm around his shoulders, withdrawing a bit when he flinched. "Still sore? And tired?"

"Yes, it takes forever to heal these days. One little graze from a blaster and it is still sore days later," the Doctor replied with a familiar grumpy frown. "And I don't know how you humans live with only one heart. I tried to work on the time accelerator for a while yesterday, barely got started and then I was forced to stop!" he added with a side long glare.

Clara gave his arm a light smack. "You were at it for fourteen hours. You were so exhausted you didn't even know I was there until I stepped on your foot!"

"Yeah and then I bumped my head on the console," the Doctor retorted. "Thanks so much for that, by the way."

"Welcome," Clara said smugly. "Besides, I thought you were never coming to bed. I couldn't sleep, knowing you were out in the console room alone and without my supervision." The artificial firelight danced off her hair and her shining eyes radiated happiness. The Doctor couldn't help but smile at her teasing tone. Then, reaching over, he grabbed three cookies off the tray with an impish grin.

"Oi! Leave some for me!" Clara laughed. "Honestly, you eat all the time now."

"So do-" The Doctor broke off the 'you' when he noticed Clara's suddenly stormy expression. _Oh. Evidently those three pounds she suddenly gained were still an issue._ "I'm always hungry," he mumbled. "Change of metabolism."

"But you still don't gain any weight," Clara complained. She had started eating again for the first time in many years and then she had human weight gain back first thing _. So unfair_. Grabbing a cookie – one – for herself and nibbling, she asked, "But you are feeling all right though, correct?"

The Doctor looked aggrieved. "I'm a Time Lord Clara. Or I used to be. I'm used to having two hearts, never sleeping and rarely eating. Now I feel sluggish and tired after the simplest jobs."

To his annoyance, Clara laughed. "Your sluggish is still more than any human can do, so quit complaining." Her tone turned thoughtful. "Do you think it was Jekab's machine that gave us our heartbeats back, Doctor? And erased my chronolock?"

The Doctor stretched his legs out once again, this time to the small table where the tray rested. Being careful not to touch it, he continued, "Part of it, yes. I think he had stored some regeneration energy, enough to perhaps start our hearts. But to do what he wanted to, reanimate a dead person or even extend his life, no, there wasn't enough for that and never would be even if I had died. I don't have enough left for that; I probably won't regenerate again at any rate. This shoulder certainly hasn't healed, except in a slow, plodding way."

Clara gave him a concerned look. "Do you think we should-"

Waving his hand, the Doctor interrupted, "Don't worry; I'm not. I have had enough of regeneration, to be honest. I really didn't want to regenerate this time; I'm tired of it. I'm exhausted at relearning everything all the time. Tired of being somebody else. I'm ready to live out one lifetime. That's enough." He thought about taking the last cookie but decided to restrain himself and sipped the cocoa instead. "As for your chronolock, I'm not sure where we are yet but I had my doubts that the Raven could find you in this galaxy anyway. But its gone and I'm glad we don't have to put that theory to the test."

"So why were you so sick on the planet?" Clara asked. "Those fields, whatever Jekab was nattering about?"

"Had to be those strong magnetic fields, the ones that killed the energy in every single thing on that planet. It was much stronger on Jekab's side of the planet than where we were before." He swallowed and looked moodily into the fire. "I can barely feel time here, Clara. The time winds aren't here – or they aren't familiar, I'm not certain which. It raises havoc with my time sense." He added gloomily, "We might be through with time travel, unless between the Tardis and myself, we can figure it out. Living life in a linear line would be new," he said thoughtfully.

Clara shrugged. "That's okay. As long as you feel all right, that's all that matters to me. Besides, maybe when we finally are completely clear of these fields, it will come back to you." She eyed the cookie plate with longing. "Still no idea where we are then?"

"No. Not the universe we know though. Some place completely different than what I've seen before. I wonder how you found it in the first place?" The Doctor asked with interest.

Clara tried to think back. "Um, I really don't know. I wasn't going anywhere in particular; just drifting in the Space Time Vortex, like we are now, and suddenly I -" She came to attention. "Wait, I hit an ion storm, a really big one. Even tossed the Tardis around. I must have hit my head or something. When I woke up, the Tardis was dead on that planet and then I realized I couldn't go anywhere. And I sat there for years after that," she added, her voice choked.

The Doctor said nothing but his arm around her shoulders. It upset him badly to think of Clara, alone and stranded for so long. Naturally she had landed on her feet; that storyteller entity was such a Clara thing to do. But it still bothered him she had suffered for so long.

Clara caved in to another cookie; there was only one anyway left thanks to the Doctor. "So, can we go back? If we want to, that is."

The Doctor was silent for a moment. A variety of emotions passed through on his face. Finally he said slowly, "I suspect if I went back, it might be fatal. I'm not supposed to be there."

"You've met your past selves before, you know," Clara reminded him. "Remember Sandshoes?" She laughed.

The Doctor groaned. "Don't remind me." He turned and asked, "Do you want to go back, Clara?"

"You know, I really don't think I do. Certainly not without you, no." Clara briskly brushed cookie crumbs from her lap. "Lots of planets to explore here, right? Well, if we can land, that is," she said doubtfully.

"After we're well clear of that magnetic field, we should be able to. That thing is huge; never seen anything like it." The Doctor became excited over something so different from the usual. Clara smiled beside him, watching him light up once again. "This universe might have possibilities after all. "But I don't want to get trapped in that field again. The thing is like the Grimpen Mire," he added, pleased that he thought that up.

"Thank you, Sherlock Holmes." Clara said dryly and stood up. "Stay here; I've got something for you."

The Doctor watched her go, idly wondering what she was up to now. When Clara came back into the room however, his eyes went wide. "Clara!"

"Merry Christmas, Doctor." A grinning Clara held up an old fashioned acoustic guitar. "I know you left Sharona's guitar back there in the wreckage but I've had this one for a long time. Tried to learn how to play it but there was no one to teach me. Or maybe I just wasn't motivated. Whatever. It's yours now."

The Doctor jumped up and gently took it from her. A range of emotions crossed his expressive face and he held the guitar reverently. He strummed a chord, grimaced and then started tuning it. "I couldn't take Sharona's; that was the one thing I did understand about Jekab. It seemed like stealing from the grave to take it." Finally, he added, "Thank you."

Clara was well pleased with his reaction. His face seemed so peaceful these days. There was serenity around him she'd never seen before. "You're welcome. Maybe you'll give lessons?"

The Doctor smiled. "Maybe." Looking a trifle upset, he added, "I'm afraid I don't have anything for you."

"You git. Your Tardis gave me the very best gift of all; you. That's all I ever wanted."

The Doctor looked at her with shiny eyes. He leaned in to kiss her forehead but she grabbed his head and kissed him on the lips. To Clara's happiness, he neither pulled away nor flailed around. He leaned in and kissed her back, soundly.

Not surprisingly though, the Doctor broke it off first. "I would say I don't know what got into me but I don't think you'd believe me," he said contritely. "But the idea of this moment was one of the things that kept me going in the confession dial."

Clara froze. It was so unlike him to volunteer any information, at any time, when it came to emotions. "Did you really forget me? After Gallifrey I mean. Did you not know who I was in the diner out in the desert?" She decided to gently take advantage of this rare moment of candor from her mysterious friend. He'd brushed off the memory block before; would he tell her the truth this time?

The Doctor shifted uncomfortably and, for a moment, she feared she might have pushed too far and he would return to hide behind his walls and defenses. But then he replied, "I had an idea it was you but my memories were so muddled, I couldn't be sure. When I got back to my Tardis, thanks for that by the way, I saw Rigsy's work on the outside and I knew your face. But I couldn't remember much of anything of what we'd done together. Or how you talked. Or what you said. Even when you mentioned the cloisters. All of it was gone. But Bill, or I should say, the Testimony's glass construct of Bill, gave me a gift before I died. All my memories of you came back. And I saw you there on that last battlefield; you told me not to forget you again because you found that offensive."

Clara chuckled. "At least I was in character. And I'm glad, really glad, that I was there in some way. But I am even happier that you are here." Glancing down, she noticed something was gone. "What happened to your ring, Doctor?"

He seemed surprised to note it was missing. "I dunno. Maybe it is back on the Tardis. Maybe it burned up." He shook his head and his eyes looked a bit sad. "I guess I lost it."

Clara was dying to ask more but tonight it didn't seem right to keep prying. He had already volunteered more than she had ever known him to before. She knew he was still tired and off balance. Frankly, Clara didn't want to see him sad again either. So, she kissed his cheek and laid her head on his arm, listening to him return to strumming his new guitar. _Besides, she would get him a new ring one of these days. Maybe herself one as well but she would make him help pick it out._

It was a contented silence for both of them, punctuated only by the Doctor's soft guitar playing.

Clara knew the Doctor had a period of adjustment ahead of him, most especially concerning his Tardis. He was being so careful about not taking over hers but he needn't be. As far as she was concerned, it was theirs. She also wanted to hear about what he had been doing in the years since they were parted. Clara was particularly interested in hearing about him teaching physics at a university. Privately, she could never see him ever having the patience for that. But it was obvious time and hardship had changed him in some ways. But, even after just a few days, she had seen more signs of him coming back to life than she had in their previous weeks of being together. He was slowly relaxing and returning to the man she loved. This time though, the earlier scathing cynicism of their first year together was gone, as was the manic adventure junkie she had raced through time with before the Trap Street tragedy. Clara would figure out the changes as they went along, and, being Clara Oswald of course, she would decide if they were healthy of not. For tonight though, it was just them and the stars. _Really,_ a _ll she would ever need._

The Doctor sneaked a quick glance down; leaning against his good shoulder, Clara was nearly asleep. This was so familiar, yet in such strange, new surroundings. When he allowed himself to think about what all had happened to him lately, even he became a little overwhelmed. He thought he had let the Doctor go but instead, it had not let go of him. But he supposed he'd get used to it soon enough. After all, he had Clara, they had a Tardis and they had a brand new universe before them.

 _ **Same old, same old, just the Doctor and Clara Oswald in the Tardis.**_


End file.
